


Only in a Sitcom

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Resting Glitch Face [3]
Category: WandaVision (TV)
Genre: (against Hayward), (lol), Action & Romance, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Jokes, Coworkers to friends, Crushes, Ending Fix, Episode: s01e04 We Interrupt This Program, Episode: s01e05 On a Very Special Episode..., Episode: s01e06 All-New Halloween Spooktacular!, Episode: s01e07 Breaking the Fourth Wall, Episode: s01e09 The Series Finale, F/M, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Humor, I see a woman who insists on being called doctor and a man who does close-up magic and think 'yes', Jimmy; you beautiful spinster; I will find you love, Kissing, Magic Tricks, Mind Control, Pining, Reunions, Snacks & Snack Food, Strangers to Coworkers, Television Watching, Violent Thoughts, Wooing, coffee buddies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 26,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29074917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: Darcy has no idea what the hell's going on with thisWandaVisionthing, but neither does Jimmy. It's kinda fun to have somebody to binge-watch alternate reality TV with.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Jimmy Woo, background Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: Resting Glitch Face [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2121495
Comments: 822
Kudos: 861





	1. Chapter 1

The snack selection is paltry to begin with. Darcy doesn’t share, out of spite. Except with Jimmy, because he’s cool and he actually called her “Dr. Lewis” until she waved off the formality and let him use her first name. He agrees with her about the snacks. If this were purely an FBI operation instead of the mixed-jurisdiction playdate it is, he might be more defensive over the lame flavour choices. As it is, the Bureau has issued no statement taking credit for the sad, muddied, salt-and-vinegar-copycat chips, so she and Jimmy spend as much time criticizing them as eating them.

Darcy tries not to outwardly sulk any less than usual when her fancy coffeemaker arrives. She pats the box and says, “Yep, important equipment acquisition,” then lugs it to her desk, giving inquisitive glances the Dirty Harry squint until they look away.

She used to be the kind of girl to hand out coffees willy-nilly, but that kind of girl is an intern and _Dr._ Darcy Lewis isn’t so easy. She hoards her shiny dispenser of caffeine like a troll. If they played nice with her to start, she might be more accommodating now. Though it takes up a lot of space at her desk, it’s worth it; the coffeemaker is the one thing that doesn’t have a screen and therefore the one thing she can stare at in peace until she drags herself back to data and frequencies and scanning for other feedback and, most importantly, the greatest little ’50s (and beyond) sitcom that never was: _WandaVision_.

Her reasoning for a full rewatch at half speed is that she’s hoping to pick up on any other telling details, anything more modern than the time warp she’s witnessing. After Monica mentioned Ultron in the episode where Wanda gives birth, Darcy realized it was possible that there were earlier slippages. Ok, she hasn’t found any that specific yet, but on _this_ rewatch (the third), she has help.

“How’s your cappuccino?” she hisses at Jimmy.

“It’s perfect. I want to sit in it like a hot tub,” he says back.

“Right?”

Darcy pulls at her hat, getting it to cover her ears just right. The Department of Somebody or Something has a bee in their bonnet (ha) over the transformation of that one dude into a beekeeper and they’re going in and out a lot, leaving the door open. It’s chilly. This is the kind of thing that pisses Darcy off when people don’t acknowledge it. Must all creature comforts fall by the wayside to make room for whatever-the-heck branch of engineering or nuclear something-or-other? Forget calling the people around her clowns—they are clearly reverse _mimes_ , failing to react to something that’s definitely here: the cold of working into the night in a New Jersey field, with nothing but her perpetually overheating laptop to keep her warm. That, and coffee.

She takes a long sip of hers and sneaks a look at Jimmy to see if he seems annoyed that she spoke while they’re working. After running through the episodes so many times, she’s succumbed to the deeply human instinct to talk during the commercials. Yeah, yeah, yeah, even the commercials have meaning here—Stark toaster _this_ , Hydra watch _that_ —but it’s all being recorded. Her brain has designated the ads “tune out time,” and repurposed them for time spent either staring blankly at the screen or talking to Jimmy.

“Hey,” she says when she slurps from her mug too loudly and he still doesn’t complain, “you’re pretty chill.”

“Am I?”

“When you’re not talking about family planning.”

Jimmy frowns.

“I’m not getting any younger.”

“Yeah, but you’re not that old.” Darcy darts a glance at him. “You don’t _look_ that old.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sure it’ll happen for you,” she adds a few minutes later, when she notices the funny longing look he gets on his face at the part where Vision holds Tommy for the first time.

“Who has the time?” Jimmy uses his mug to motion towards the happy family on Darcy’s non-flat television. “Reality is a secret joint stakeout where we may be getting irradiated by the energy field over Westview. Sit-down dinners and painting the nursery only happen on TV.”

She nods along and says, “Also, hostile alien invasions.”

“Yes! How am I supposed to meet someone when it’s one supernatural catastrophe after another!”

Despite his distress, Darcy cackles.

“Man, the stories I could tell you.”

“About dating or supernatural catastrophes?”

She considers this.

“I mean, _both_. There’s some overlap there. Nothing serious though,” she notes calmly while Wanda screams her head off pushing out Billy. “I don’t even have a reliable apocalypse booty call to text whenever the world seems like it might end. Do you?”

“God no.”

They both pause to _aww_ over the on-screen couple cradling their swaddled newborns.

“You want some licorice?” she asks. “I snagged it earlier and I don’t want to rattle the wrapper when we get to the scene where Monica asks Wanda about Pietro.”

She sets her mug down and retrieves the bag from behind one of the monitors, holding it out to Jimmy with her eyes still on the screen. At the sharp tug that nearly yanks the packet out of her hand, she turns to see what’s up. The pieces are stuck together and, giggling, she has to grab the licorice next to the one he’s trying to pull out. They peel them apart with a tacky sound that Darcy finds so satisfying. She tosses the bag onto the desk and leans back, crossing her leg and bobbing her foot anxiously, anticipating the ominous cut between Monica confronting Wanda and the couple bouncing the twins on the couch as the credits roll.

“Anything?” a voice asks brusquely from behind them.

Darcy whips her head around, licorice hanging out of the corner of her mouth, to find a S.W.O.R.D. agent snooping on her and Jimmy’s binge session.

“Research,” Jimmy tells the man, biting off the end of his own strand of licorice, his cappuccino raised defiantly in his other hand.

“Carry on.”

“I don’t report to you,” Jimmy mumbles after him, jamming the licorice back into his mouth to soften.

Watching him, Darcy grins. He eats his licorice the same way she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know. Here I am again. Shut up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the incredible response to the first chapter! It's very exciting that so many of us are already shipping these two (who are DarcE. Woo in my head).
> 
> In this one, Darcy and Jimmy have a lot of questions that need answers. Not all of them are scientific. Hope you enjoy!

“Do you think we could get a couch in there?” Darcy asks, gingerly moving the cords around to recheck the connections before they perform the newest test they’ve devised.

“In the building?” Jimmy asks. “With all the S.W.O.R.D. people and the war-room-in-a-sci-fi-movie setup? No way.”

She assesses the output strength. They had enough juice to carry Jimmy’s voice to the radio during Dottie’s passive-aggressive garden party, but audio _plus_ video might take some more effort to push through. Darcy keeps picturing poking a plump hamster through a paper towel roll.

“What about a futon?”

“A futon? Are you turning the place into a dorm room?”

“Hey,” she snaps, jerking her head up, “no judgement. I’m a professional and, as a professional, I always make sure I have the right tools for the job. Right now, the job is binge-watching a TV show, and for that you need snacks and the ability to stretch your legs out and be comfy.”

Darcy watches Jimmy think about that for a minute.

“Actually,” he concedes, “that does make sense.”

“Thank you.”

“Doesn’t mean they’ll let you have a futon.”

She shrugs, scrolling through the recording on the laptop she has perched atop the rest of the equipment. With a shiver of uneasiness, she passes the awkward jump from Monica to no-Monica and pauses the footage.

“If I gave up on every pipe dream, I wouldn’t be standing here with a doctorate in astrophysics.”

“Maybe we could have pillows too,” Jimmy suggests shyly.

“That’s the spirit!” Darcy crows. She steps behind the tripod and squints at the camcorder’s display. “Is the red light on?”

“Red light? Yep.”

“Sweet,” she says, rotating the camera slightly to get Jimmy centered in the frame. “Now, don’t be nervous, you look great.”

“I do?”

She doesn’t respond, arm shooting out to hover over her laptop’s touchpad.

“And… action!” Darcy commands, hitting Play on _WandaVision_.

Confident that the camcorder’s doing its thing, she turns away from Jimmy as he speaks, concentrating hard on Wanda and Vision’s faces. What they’re trying to do is get Jimmy on TV for Wanda to view. Admittedly, the success of this endeavor would be easier to measure if she couldn’t only see the back of the on-screen television, but Darcy’s worked with tougher circumstances.

Wanda and Vision are still just sitting there, holding the babies, but the radio message wasn’t an unequivocal victory either, so she glances back and motions for Jimmy to keep talking. She pulls the headphones over her ears to dampen his voice (“ _Wanda? Wanda, can you hear me? I’d like to talk to you, help you. Wanda_?”) and heighten the sound of the show. Unlike the eventual crackle from the radio, she isn’t hearing Jimmy in _WandaVision_. Wanda’s blissful new-mom expression doesn’t change. If she’s ignoring them, she’s doing it more convincingly than she did after they hacked the radio signal at Dottie’s; Jimmy verified the troubled look that Darcy saw on Wanda’s face when she worked up the nerve to play the scene for him, extra-slow. Him not thinking she’s imagining things has made her trust him more.

Darcy gives it another minute, then tugs off the headphones.

“Ok, cut,” she instructs.

Jimmy’s imploring message trails off and he looks at her like he knows it’s going to be bad news. What hasn’t been?

“Didn’t work?”

“Nah.” She starts unplugging and coiling up lines. “I’m gonna replay what we just did and see if my instruments pick up anything alongside the broadcast signal, but there wasn’t any noticeable effect to the naked eye.”

“I liked the idea.”

Darcy smiles gratefully. That’s nice to hear, even if the experiment was a failure. Science is trial and error and she isn’t one to turn down the pep talk that could get her to the next trial. Never know when it’ll result in a breakthrough.

“You did?”

“Yeah.” Jimmy’s standing out of the way, but not in an annoying, unhelpful way like the S.W.O.R.D. people do. He’s just not interfering, trusting her to disassemble and repackage her own gear. “Why not try inserting our message in an old clip? I think the passage of time question is an important one to answer. Wanda’s clearly marking it…”

“With the decade progression from episode to episode,” Darcy chimes in. “Exactly!”

“But it’s seriously skewed. One decade per episode, but each episode only spans a day or so of time.”

“And is that just Wanda’s time, or our time too?” she picks up. “Is it live or is it some kind of loop? Or maybe there’s a lot more happening than what we see and Wanda’s leaving the rest of her life on the cutting room floor, while we just get to watch the little bits she packages into an episode. Like, what is her _process_?”

Jimmy laughs to himself, yanking her out of her spiral of questions she doesn’t have answers for.

“I wonder if she’s Ron Howarding it,” he says. “Pauses things and just goes back to her director’s chair and puts on her baseball cap.”

A laugh bursts from Darcy too.

“Personally, I hope she’s Peter Jacksoning and we’ll get a disc with like thirty hours of bonus footage and special features.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Jimmy says with sudden sincerity.

“Do you really believe that or are you just mistaking my surplus of expensive doodads for competence?” she jokes. She takes a centering breath. “You know what? No. You’re right. I can do this. We can do this.”

…Though it maybe doesn’t show the greatest amount of belief in herself when she hunches to peer through the camcorder to make sure the test didn’t flop because she forgot to remove the lens cap.

“What are you looking at?” Jimmy asks, but he asks it from _beside_ her and he must’ve used a sneaky FBI tiptoeing technique because she didn’t hear him creep up.

“Bah!” Darcy shouts, bumping her face into the camcorder.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry!”

“It’s fine.” She straightens up. There’s a smudge on her glasses from where she mashed them against her eyelid. “Blurry, but fine.”

“Hang on!” he says excitedly and Darcy does, mostly out of confusion. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to wait for, let alone why.

With a flick of his wrist, Jimmy presents her with a scrap of fabric, trapped between his fingers. Instinctively, she applauds.

“It’s a cleaning cloth for my phone screen,” he explains, handing it to her. “I always carry it around.”

“Yeah, dude, but not in your _hand_!” she gushes. “How did you do that?!”

“You know the episode where Wanda and Vision do the magic show and he tells Monica that a magician never reveals his secrets?”

Her shoulders drop as she pulls her glasses off. He’s not going to share the trick? That sucks.

“Uh huh,” Darcy says sullenly, ready to be disappointed. “I love that episode.”

“Well, that excuse is bullshit. I can teach you later.”

“For real? That would be amazing!”

She grins, rubbing the cloth briskly across the lens. So much better. She puts her glasses back on and beams at Jimmy as she returns his cloth. So, so much better.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready for magic, pining, and the power of an '80s ballad?

“Is this your card?” Darcy asks seriously.

Still no give on the futon request, so she and Jimmy are knee-to-knee in boring old office chairs, looking down at the broken potato chip in Darcy’s palm. He stares at it for a second, then glances up to her face.

“No.”

“Erggg!”

She pops the chip into her mouth and, chewing, presents the next one in their improvised card deck (the dregs of a bag very ambitiously claiming to be sour cream and onion).

“If _thif_ yuh car’?”

“Also no.”

Darcy makes a noise of protest, quickly swallowing.

“Are you sure? The chip, I mean _card_ , you picked had an air bubble just like this one!” She gestures at the smashed chip in her hand.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” Jimmy tells her instead of engaging in the debate. “It’s just practice.”

He pulls out his vibrating phone as she brushes crumbs from her hands into the small wastepaper basket tucked under her desk.

“They found me,” he says. His voice is heavy with dread as he grips the phone. Darcy looks to him, expression shocked and worried, but Jimmy grins. “It’s work.”

“Don’t _do_ that,” she groans.

“I have to take this and, hey,” he says, tapping her shoulder and pointing past it, “look busy. The nosy S.W.O.R.D. guy’s on his way over.”

“Fan _tastic_.”

Darcy slaps on her headphones and plays the beekeeper clip on a loop, bent intently towards her screen like she’s back in undergrad, cramming in the library until her eyes burn. But she’s gained some wisdom and backbone since then; the clip is muted while “We’re Not Gonna Take It” plays in the background. How she looks: single-mindedly focused on her work. What she’s actually doing: trying to sync up Wanda’s “no” with Twisted Sister’s in “no, we ain’t gonna take it.” It seems to fool Mr. S.W.O.R.D. because he passes behind her chair without bothering her.

She wasn’t slacking and she won’t be made to feel bad about taking a break. If some of the members of these various government factions paused for a snack every once in a while, they’d probably be a lot less cranky and domineering. (Don’t these guys have a union?) Darcy gets it—everyone here takes their work super seriously. So does she! But the situation is unprecedented, the source for most of their data is weird as hell, and the answers are slow to come. In circumstances such as these, she prefers to remain calm and pace herself. Also, to remember that things could be _so_ much worse. At least their field camp isn’t under attack. They can’t even confirm there _is_ any danger until someone gets into _WandaVision_ and makes it back out to tell their tale. Darcy’s fingers are crossed for Monica Rambeau. She knows Jimmy’s are too.

The more times she watches the beekeeper climb out of the manhole, the creepier she finds it, like the girl from _The Ring_ , so she pauses the video and glances around for her colleague/card trick instructor. Not seeing him, Darcy decides to stretch her legs. One of the fundamentals she’s learned as a superhero-adjacent individual is that, if the Dark Elves don’t getcha, the sedentary lifestyle will.

“Huuup,” she says, ditching the headphones and pushing out of her chair.

She tries to move as purposefully as possible so nobody’ll think she’s free to do lackey work. Whenever no one appears focused on her, Darcy goes up on her toes, glancing around for an FBI jacket or the gobsmacked face of someone who’s just witnessed an impressive feat of close-up magic. Nothin’.

Wandering outside, she skids to a stop; Jimmy’s on his way in, head down as he slips his phone back into his pocket. He looks up, smiles, _and_ waves. That gets a laugh out of Darcy because he’s way too close to her to need to wave, but she returns it.

“Do you need help?” he asks.

That stumps her.

“Help?”

Oh. Oh right. Because why else would she have tracked Jimmy down like a mom losing sight of their kid at the supermarket? She could try to explain the dangers of sitting too long, but that’ll probably just sound like an excuse and make things awkward, like she’s covering up that she followed him. Only she _didn’t_ follow him, she just… missed him? Uh, yeah, no, she’s not saying _that_.

“Just going to the bathroom,” she says, nodding towards the facilities about a hundred yards off. “I’m good. I know the way.”

“I’ll… I’ll see you back at the desk then.”

He’s hanging back, hands stuffed boyishly into the front pockets of his pants. _You’re not that old_ , she tells Jimmy again, in her head. She nods to him.

“Barring any further alternate-reality shenanigans, yes, yes you will.”

Darcy wasn’t planning a trip to the bathroom just yet, but it’s a good opportunity to rid her hands of any enduring oiliness from the chips, and to make more space in her bladder for her next cup of coffee. She also fixes her lipstick. Because of the chips. Her hand trembles slightly. Because of the coffee.

To steady herself on the walk back, she gives herself a new objective to concentrate on: probing at the jerky moments where Wanda’s edited the story. If Darcy can find a cleaner frequency to use as a path to that jagged edge, maybe she can pull the narrative apart, like pages of a book that have gotten stuck together. That might be totally impossible, but it’ll be something to try, something to apply her expertise to. The only downside is that she doesn’t need Jimmy to do it.

That’s fine though, she tells herself, curling her fingers up into her coat sleeves in the cool air. She and Jimmy might be working on the same overall project, but it’s not like somebody assigned them to the same task. She’ll be doing her stuff and he’ll be doing his, nearby. He’s got his own people and suggesting a new approach is probably why they called. They can still be desk neighbours and Darcy will do the neighbourly thing and ask if the Bureau’s given Jimmy a fresh lead to investigate. Unless that’s classified. How many delicious cappuccinos would she need to barter to gain security clearance? Much to think about.

Back in the building, she doesn’t have to search for Jimmy this time—he’s sitting at her desk, wearing the headphones, and looking right at her as she makes her way over. His gaze is unfocused though, so Darcy takes her last steps with exaggerated slowness, smiling uncomfortably as she pokes his forearm.

“Hey, Jimmy, you ok?”

His reaction is as swift as his hands when he makes something appear out of thin air, only not elegant, not graceful. He bats the headphones from his head, knocking them back to hang around his neck, and it tugs the cord free from her laptop. Foreigner’s “Waiting for a Girl Like You” blares out. Darcy shoots out a hand to her keyboard, pausing the song, because Jimmy could be one swipe from sending the whole laptop straight off the desk.

“Not a fan of Foreigner, huh?” she asks. “Me neither really. Never trust a premade eighties playlist. Serves me right for abandoning my own playlists, I guess. I’ve got like three thousand songs on there. You’d think that’d be enough.”

Jimmy doesn’t respond. Now she’s startled him _and_ rambled at him. Yeah, he’ll definitely want to keep collaborating.

“Are you too jumpy for another coffee?” Darcy asks tentatively.

“No, I’m fine. I just, uh, actually thought that we should stop for the night.”

“Oh, well, ok…”

“And we could talk instead?” Her lips part in surprise at his hopeful expression as he continues. “Not about this? There’s a restaurant a couple miles from here and I know S.W.O.R.D.’s got things locked down pretty tightly to prevent information leaks, but if I—”

Before she can clarify whether Jimmy’s offering to jeopardize national security to take her out to dinner, the sound of motors and yelling outside interrupts him and steals both of their attention. They rush out to see what’s happened and find the source of the commotion.

Monica Rambeau is back from Westview.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I'm on Tumblr!](https://forasecondtherewedwon.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **me:** can't wait for a little more canon content to work with  
>  **ep. 5:**  
>   
>  **me:** oh god oh no that's a lot

Darcy keeps her shit together until Monica has whisked the curtain shut to change. Then, she grabs Jimmy by his sleeve and drags him out—out of the room, out of the building—so she can _breathe_. Which she does bent over, hands braced on her knees.

“A little overwhelmed, huh?” Jimmy asks.

She glances up at him and he reaches uncertainly for her shoulder. With a small nod from Darcy, he plants his hand there.

“Yeah,” he goes on, “it can be pretty surreal, meeting someone you’re a fan of. I remember I was at headquarters one day, turned a corner, and, bam, Leonardo DiCaprio is right in front of me. I guess he was there doing research for _J. Edgar_. We shook hands.”

“Seriously? My thirteen-year-old self is so jealous right now.”

“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic.”

Darcy huffs and stands, letting Jimmy’s hand slip from her shoulder and flipping her hair out of her face. The cold is starting to hit her now, but it’s good. She can think.

“That’s not why I was overwhelmed. Although, yes, Captain Monica Rambeau is a legend and a badass, I must acknowledge. But those brain scans, Jimmy?! And the bloodwork? Maybe we didn’t see the results for those, but _things were implied_.”

“If Monica’s blood labs look anything like those scans, there’s no information there,” he fills in.

“Blank!” Darcy translates, a little hysterically. “How can her brain be blank? My brain, in the morning, before I’ve had coffee, _sure_ , but not Monica’s brain, not after she was in _there_.”

She swings an arm out and points sharply towards Westview.

“What does it mean?” Jimmy asks.

His voice is steady and Darcy has a suspicion that he’s trying to, like, deescalate her freak-out with some sort of FBI tactic. Normally, she would not take kindly to being tactic’d, but his calm is kinda helping. She sighs.

“Well,” she says more calmly, “we know her response hasn’t been erased, because Monica knows she was there and she can tell us what it was like.”

“Right.”

Darcy puts a hand to her head, thinking.

“Even if S.W.O.R.D. were to bring in some kickass brain doctor—”

“Neurologist.”

“—I’m not sure it’s biological. It could be an effect of passing back through the Hex?”

“Radiation? That’s what you’re saying, right?” Jimmy checks, looking about as alarmed as he should, she thinks. “That Monica’s been irradiated?”

“Here’s… the thing,” Darcy says slowly.

He waits for her to explain the thing and when she doesn’t, he prompts her with a wave of his hand.

“Ok,” she tries again, pushing her slipping glasses up. “The thing. Monica’s probably fine. Besides the wonky lab work, no immediate effects. You even said she was behaving like her usual self.”

“That’s true.”

“Maybe the Hex has just made Monica temporarily incompatible with our machines, whether that’s Wanda’s intention or not. Wanda could have specifically concentrated her powers on Monica’s mind because she’s trying to keep the inner workings of Westview a secret, or the apparent brain-wipe is just a by-product of the larger, you know, bizarre situation.”

“So… you have no idea,” Jimmy interprets.

“But,” Darcy notes in a chipper tone, “she’s probably fine.”

“Let’s just see what she says at the briefing.”

She nods and returns inside when he gestures for her to go ahead of him. Abruptly, Darcy giggles.

“Can you believe I got to bring pants to Captain Monica Rambeau? How awesome was _that_?”

* * *

“How did she know this was exactly what I needed to watch after that briefing?” Darcy asks, shaking her head in amazement as she passes Jimmy the bag of chips.

Her face scrunches up with an unspoken _aww_ when Wanda dries the dog and cuddles it close.

“She _didn’t_ know,” Monica says.

She’s standing behind their chairs with her arms crossed, a little less in the mood for kicking back in front of the television than Darcy and Jimmy. She declined the chips.

“Are you sure? She might be concentrating on these especially fluffy—no pun intended—scenes intentionally to soothe us.”

“I don’t think we’re her primary audience.”

“But she knows people are watching now,” Jimmy points out. “Ever since you went in there, Captain.”

“Whatever the hell she’s doing, it doesn’t soothe _me_ ,” Monica says firmly. “Catch me up on anything important. I have some calculations I want to run through.”

“Okey dokey,” Darcy calls after her. “Good luck!”

She turns to Jimmy.

“I wanted to say, it was really decent of you to stick up for Wanda at the briefing.”

“I was just presenting the facts,” he counters, getting all bashful. That makes her grin.

“You presented the heck outta them, even with Director Dickhead trying to frame Wanda in the worst possible light. You reminded everybody that she’s an Avenger. Important people trusted her. Like, literally put their lives in her glow-y red hands.”

“I don’t know if she considers herself an Avenger anymore.”

“That’s irrelevant and you know it.” Darcy kicks her foot gently into his. “You did good work, Agent Woo.”

He’s too pleased and flattered to meet her eye, so she cuts the compliment stream off there. They go back to watching the screen until the new dog almost gets electrocuted by the wall socket and Jimmy jumps.

“Aw, that’s a tiny shock compared to a taser,” she says reassuringly.

Jimmy’s expression tells her he is not reassured.

“Uh, yes, I have used a taser,” Darcy informs him, “and stop looking at me like that. You have a _gun_.”

He gets up from his chair.

“Wait, don’t be mad,” she pleads.

Jimmy smiles.

“I just have a phone call to make and if we’re meeting up with Monica again soon, I better do it now. It’s all on me to liaise because S.W.O.R.D. doesn’t exactly go out of their way to keep other agencies in the loop. I should’ve called with an update right after the briefing.”

“How come you didn’t?”

His face shifts to confusion around his smile.

“Because I wanted to watch _WandaVision_ with you.”

“Oh, yeah, right, of course.”

Darcy swivels back to face the television as Jimmy leaves. She hasn’t forgotten that he kind of asked her out. Though it might’ve just been a colleague-to-colleague thing. If they keep on a constant trajectory of hanging out and brainstorming together, people might start calling him her work husband. (If S.W.O.R.D. ever produced the type of employee capable of saying the words ‘work husband.’ And if that’s even a thing people say when you don’t have a non-work husband to differentiate from.)

The truth is, she’s attached. Crazy scenarios bring it out in her, this need to bond, form a team, merge into one efficient unit performing many stressful tasks at once, like one of the robots in _Transformers_. She wants to merge with Jimmy. Wait, no. Well…

Maybe this is not the time, but there’s been, like, an entire decade of _not the time_. Longer! Can she put the possibility of anything happening between them off until the mystery is solved? Until Westview is saved? Until Wanda’s saved? (Darcy is _so_ not on Hayward’s side about writing Wanda off as a villain when there’s still a buttload they don’t understand about what’s happening in there.) For fuck’s sake, somewhere between the radioactive dome and the brisk-walking, loud-talking, conclusion-jumping S.W.O.R.D. agents, there’s gotta be room for one little crush.


	5. Chapter 5

Two steps forward, one massive shove back. Literally, in the example of Wanda evicting Monica from Westview by sending her hurtling through the Hex to land in S.W.O.R.D.’s commandeered field. Darcy wishes she worked for the _Star Trek_ people instead—at least then there’d be the pretence that they’re here to learn, to explore, to discover, rather than Director Hayward’s approach of secret missiles and shooting first, asking questions _never_. This does not have to be a war between them and Wanda. But that asshole director may have started one.

Darcy and Jimmy held hands. She thinks it happened when Wanda breeched the perimeter, lugging the S.W.O.R.D. drone (then surging with currents of red energy), but she can’t remember who reached for who. Maybe it was a mutual thing. Instinctual. _In case of emergency, find and deploy your personal Comfort Jimmy_. What Darcy does remember is the squeeze. That happened the instant Wanda redirected all the agents’ guns to train on Hayward. Suddenly, she and Jimmy had their fingers interlaced to grip each other for dear, sweet, fucking _life_. But Wanda retreated, the guns lowered, and Jimmy let go. The last thing only happened after Monica walked over to them and assured them they were safe. Although it probably wasn’t a very reliable promise, it was given with such confidence that Darcy believed her, staggering back to the building.

Only, she walked straight through—not _that_ straight, weaving around desks and over open cases of equipment—and out the far entrance. Now, she’s pacing in the night. There’s no way it’s significantly safer being on the other side of a few flimsy buildings if Wanda elects to come back and tear this place apart, but if Darcy doesn’t think too hard about it, she can fool herself for the moment.

“How is this my life?” she asks the mockingly tranquil night sky. After a second, she amends the question to, “How is this my life _again_?”

“Darcy? There you are!”

It’s Jimmy, striding out to meet her. She’s not sure she’s really seen him _stride_ anywhere because he’s usually not the hasty type, but he’s striding to her. God, was he worried? Why on earth would he need to worry when they’re surrounded by radiation, men with assault weapons, and an Avenger gone rogue? What could be safer?! Darcy’s horrified to hear a giddy giggle leave her mouth.

“My legs started working again and they decided it was time to run away,” she says as Jimmy comes up to her.

He frowns and looks back at the S.W.O.R.D. camp.

“The building’s right there.”

“Well, my desire to flee came up against my desire to not do cardio. Fleeing lost.”

“God, so relatable.”

“I thought I overheard someone mention you were on the FBI softball team?”

“Yeah, I am, I was just trying to make you feel better.”

Darcy lets out a shaky laugh.

“Are you ok?” Jimmy asks softly, even though there’s nobody else back here.

“There’s close-up magic and then there’s magic up-close, and I definitely prefer the former.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Are _you_ ok?” she checks. “I’ve seen some shit, but this kinda thing isn’t so much your forte, is it?”

He sighs, putting his hands on his hips.

“I’m worried about what happens next. Hayward isn’t going to back off. Wanda’s reaction will only make him strike again and it won’t be another Trojan horse, like that drone. Next time…”

Jimmy looks past her and Darcy turns to see agents headed their way—not _at_ them, but probably establishing a perimeter around the makeshift base.

“We should go inside,” she says.

“Yeah.”

They find Monica at Darcy’s desk, elbow-deep in a family-sized bag of mediocre chips.

“Well, well, well,” Darcy says smugly, then smiles and steals a chair from another nearby desk, waving Jimmy into his usual seat.

“I should probably be taking a break from Wanda right about now,” Monica says, “or at least wanting to, but… I had to know what she’d do after our confrontation.”

“Makes sense. Talk about broadcasting your feelings.”

“But look at this.” Monica angles the television set and Darcy scoffs, affronted.

“She went to commercial break?!”

“I hate that,” Jimmy says, letting Monica shake some chips into his hand.

“It’s still telling,” Monica allows as they watch the TV family slop various liquids across their kitchen surfaces and mop up with Lagos brand paper towels. “We have to assume that all of these commercials have sprung from her subconscious, memories she won’t let herself relive, things that can’t exist in her perfect world but that she can’t completely banish either, so they show up in the periphery, in ads. If Wanda’s remembering Lagos… what is she feeling?”

“Pain,” Jimmy says.

“That she’s been misunderstood,” Darcy adds.

“Yes,” Monica says to both of them. “And guilt. If she’s stopping herself from accessing those feelings right now in order to maintain the sitcom façade, then this may be her conscience speaking to us. The better self that the Avengers saw when they took her on board.”

“Which Hayward is refusing to see.”

Monica looks away and Darcy almost regrets her comment. Earlier, when Jimmy brought up Captain Marvel, Monica had a similar reaction, declining to discuss it and changing the subject at once. Clearly, there are some mixed emotions there. Monica’s mom literally died and left this Hayward guy in charge. Having no time or authority to interfere when he ordered the missile launch must’ve felt like shit.

“So, what’s the plan?” Jimmy asks them.

“To sleep on it,” Monica replies heavily. “That’s what my mom always told me to do if I came up against a problem I couldn’t immediately solve.”

Between the stress of the showdown outside and the relief of sitting between the only two people here Darcy trusts farther than where she could throw them, she’s feeling like it might be the right time to ask Monica about her mom. Bonding! But, as her mouth opens to pose a tentative first question, Monica stands.

“Problem’ll still be here in the morning,” she announces. “Staying up all night watching an ad for paper towels is not a productive use of my time. I’ll see you both tomorrow.”

Darcy’s eyes glaze over as the Lagos commercial starts over again, but her brain doesn’t take a break from contemplating the message behind it. Guilt. Pain. Regret. Wanda’s hurting, holding on to the last thing she has, and they’re ready to rip the shreds of her hope from her hands. Still, Darcy gets goosebump-y all over when she remembers how effortlessly Wanda wielded her power to point all those guns at Hayward. She could’ve pointed them at Monica, or Jimmy, or Darcy herself.

“Do you wanna go to bed?” Jimmy asks.

“Yes,” Darcy says immediately, surrendering to her brain’s dormant-but-not-gone We Almost Died mode. She could seriously go for a life-affirming tumble on Jimmy’s government-issue cot.

“Separately,” he corrects, flustered. “To sleep.”

“Oh. Then, no.” She shoots him a coy smirk.

“Do you usually flirt in the face of death and destruction?”

“Almost always.”

With a smile, Jimmy rises from his chair. This should be the moment when he takes her hand and yanks her out of hers so they can make out passionately and knock all of her specialized equipment to the floor to create space on the desk (which she would of course cry about later because shit is _expensive_ and grants do not cover the full price tag), but that doesn’t happen.

“Then,” Jimmy says, “I’m going to assume it’s a panic response and say goodnight.”

A small squeak of confused protest comes out of her. She’s about to argue that YOLO is not her only motive when he surprises her. Bending down, Jimmy kisses her lightly on the cheek. Before he pulls away, he whispers against her skin and, for the first time, Darcy’s happy she doesn’t have her hat on because she can hear him with perfect clarity:

“Thanks for holding my hand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me that wasn't some slick close-up magic from our main man Jimmy.


	6. Chapter 6

Being awake in the S.W.O.R.D. barracks is bad enough—a dozen people sleeping in each of these long tents, with a dozen sets of sleep noises and a dozen sets of eyes to potentially see you in your PJs if you creep out to use the facilities a couple buildings over—but tonight, sleeping’s even worse. The drained adrenaline from getting to aim their weapons at Wanda seems to knock the agents out no problem. Even the nuclear biologist Darcy met in the transport on the way to the base is snoring away. She wonders if Monica dropped off easily and, if not, whether she might come looking for Darcy for a late-night chat about cute things like _are they maybe all going to die in the crossfire between Dickhead Hayward’s bullets and Wanda’s hermit fury_?

Eventually, Darcy sleeps, and she dreams in colours and sounds rather than distinct images. It’s like her subconscious is slipping between TV channels, catching blips of dialogue, sound effects, and colour schemes—though, actually, a lot of what she sees is black and white. She can’t quite tune in to any station. In her dream, she’s frustrated, trying to make sense of something, but she doesn’t have any of her equipment. That’s irritating AF; there should be some really interesting readings in here or out there or wherever she is, some numbers to be crunched.

Suddenly, her body goes cold and a concentrated red glow builds right in front of her. Darcy can’t tell if she’s begging for mercy or maybe even threatening the glow in a last-ditch attempt at self-preservation, can’t hear her own voice over the crackle of television static as loud as gunfire. Just as she’s really starting to panic… she wakes up with a jerk. The red glow is the morning light filtered through the inside of her eyelids because some moron didn’t secure the flappy front door of the tent! That’s also the source of the cold and, as soon as she gets her glasses on, she grabs for her hat and gloves, bundling up before entering the wider world (everything outside her cot).

She’s warmer once she’s dressed. Marginally. Venturing out into the bustle of the camp, she realizes it’s later than she usually gets to work. The fact that her tent was empty was nothing to judge by; her S.W.O.R.D. roommates keep disgusting hours, up before dawn. When she gets to her desk, Jimmy has hot coffee waiting. This guy is great. Like, _really_ great.

“I may or may not have figured out the espresso setting,” he tells her.

His harried tone pairs well with his slightly frantic appearance; the FBI jacket is balled up on his chair and his sleeves are rolled up unevenly. Uh oh.

“May or may not have?” Darcy asks skeptically, reaching for her coffee despite Jimmy’s lack of confidence in his efforts. They don’t have designated espresso-sized vessels, so it’s in a regular mug, which she has to tip pretty far before getting a strong, sudden gulp of coffee. “Holy shit,” she gasps. “Is there rocket fuel in this? And I ask that sincerely because of where we are and who we’re with.”

“Just coffee,” he insists. “It grows on you.” He takes a sip from his own mug to demonstrate. “This is my fifth cup.”

“Ah.”

So that’s why he’s practically vibrating with unsettling energy this morning. By why has her laidback colleague-turned-crush felt the need to consume five cups of straight caffeine?

“I get the feeling I missed something…” Darcy begins.

“Uh, yeah. We didn’t wanna wake you.”

She smiles, picturing Jimmy poking his head into her barracks to look for her.

“Aww, you knew I was still in bed?”

“One of the agents from your tent mentioned it when she heard Monica and I speculating about when you might be in.”

Ok, not so much sweet as embarrassing then, finding out she’s probably earned herself a rep as the lazy scientist who sleeps in while the world’s coming down around everyone’s ears.

“I see,” she says curtly, prying her laptop open. Is her hand already trembling from the caffeine, or is she just imagining it?

She goes to flip on the television set and Jimmy reaches for her wrist with the swift reflexes born of a career as an FBI agent and downing five cups of espresso. He stops before touching her though, reining his jumpy reaction in until he’s just holding up a stalling hand. Darcy’s heart kicks against her ribcage.

“I definitely missed something,” she decides.

“Yeah. The never-ending paper towel commercial ended this morning and the next scene is, well, kind of heartbreaking.”

Darcy sets her coffee down so it won’t be adding to the immediate tightness in her chest.

“Oh god. The twins…?”

“They’re fine,” Jimmy promises. “Wanda and Vision too. The big question is…” He presses his hands together, looking down at her seriously. “Do you want spoilers?”

“Normally, I would put you on friendship probation for even asking that, but in this case, yeah, gimme the bad news.”

“Sparky dies.”

“WHAT?! Wanda killed the _dog_?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” he hedges, drawing his chair up to the desk and sitting down. “She seemed pretty surprised.” Jimmy flicks his eyes to meet hers. “I just wanted you to know.”

“Thanks,” she says with a sad smile. “I’m probably still gonna cry.”

“No shame in that.”

Darcy leaves the TV alone and signs into her laptop, accessing the latest recording. It looks as though there’s a bunch of footage left in this episode of _WandaVision_ , but Jimmy has the video paused at the end of the Lagos ad. She hits Play and leans back in her chair, not bringing her espresso because even coffee can’t temper the dread she’s currently experiencing.

She watches Wanda and the boys search for their missing dog. She knows where they’ll find it seconds before they do because Jimmy abruptly takes her hand in his. When she sniffles a minute later, he passes her a Kleenex.

“Poor Sparky,” Darcy blubbers when the scene’s over and Jimmy’s paused the episode again. “Poor kids. Poor _Wanda_.”

“I don’t know why she’d do it,” he says. “What purpose does it serve, besides traumatizing her children?”

She wipes her nose with the tissue and thinks. She thinks of them as fictional, she thinks of them as people. She thinks of their character arcs and the possible similarities and differences between the path Wanda’s set them all on and how they would grow (faster or slower?) and change (for better or for worse?) outside of the Hex.

“She tries to make it into some kind of lesson…” Jimmy continues, thinking out loud. “She’s teaching Tommy and Billy about restraint and…”

“Death.”

“Which doesn’t make sense, since that’s the one thing Wanda’s absolutely committed to ignoring. Like I said, I don’t think the dog dying was part of her suburban fantasy.”

Darcy has a sudden, devastating thought.

“Was that a real dog? I know Wanda’s pushed matter around like a kid making a sandcastle, but has anyone identified the dog?”

“It’s not like Sparky has a paper trail,” Jimmy says doubtfully. “No driver’s licence, no passport, no credit card bill for the six Snuggies he was charged for when he only bought _one_ because he was curious…”

“Yeah, but, come on,” she argues, interrupting his highly specific example. “S.W.O.R.D.’s invasive. Like, pap-smear invasive. If we can match up the role of Mrs. Hart with the real-life Sharon Davis, then we must be able to find some photographic evidence of that dog, if it existed pre-Hex.”

He’s nodding.

“Right. I can get somebody on that. Home surveillance footage, animal shelter records if Sparky really was a stray.”

“If not…” Darcy takes in a long breath through her mouth. “Well, Wanda brought the twins into this world. Maybe, as a consequence—and I don’t know if it’s accidental or on purpose—she’s starting to take people out.”

“Jeepers. That’s not good.”

“I know.”

“No,” Jimmy says insistently, “that’s _really_ not good, because the twins aren’t the only characters Wanda added to Westview.”

Her mouth falls open, but before she can ask, he skims a finger across her laptop’s touchpad, bringing the cursor to the Play button.

“You better watch the rest of the episode.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have an intentionally set schedule for fic updates, but I've done Friday/Sunday/Tuesday two weeks in a row now. This week, there will also be a Thursday update, because writing more fic is my brain's preferred method of chewing through the many mysteries presented by _WandaVision_.
> 
> To FunkyinFishnet, SpideyFics, scifiromance, Littlekidsteve, Awakening5, missingcrowdsof1000s, LastOneOut, cluelessrebel1988, Muneca, alkalinekiwi, CrazyCandyCat, lonelyWhale52, casualdarings, iarrannme, love_never_dies13, Linzerj, Super_Unicorn_Llama, failuretoland, I_should_sleep, asuiah, TheCrazyOne_42, iovewords, TheMoonlitSojourner, and Machiavelien, thank you all so much for your comments on chapter five!! The kind words are excellent encouragement!


	7. Chapter 7

“That’s a whole person,” Darcy says, jabbing at the screen.

“Yeah.”

“But’s he’s—”

“I know. But so was Vision,” Jimmy points out.

That doesn’t calm Darcy’s distress over Pietro Maximoff’s miraculous back-from-the-dead act.

“Vision’s body was being housed at S.W.O.R.D. headquarters,” Monica reminds him, “and he was, or _is_ , made of Vibranium. Presumably, Pietro’s been in the ground for _years_.”

“Normally, I’m not a fan of makeover scenes, but I definitely get why a decomposed Pietro would need to be prettied up a little for TV. Maybe that’s why he looks different.”

“Gross,” Darcy comments, “but good point.”

“But all of this is irrelevant,” Monica insists, pushing out of her chair to perch on the edge of Darcy’s desk and glance between the two of them. “Nobody else has gone into the Hex.”

“Are we sure?” Jimmy asks with his eyebrows raised. “He’s fast.”

“I went through the last twelve hours of Hex readouts with a fine-toothed comb,” Darcy says. “There were no dead zones in the energy field, no scrambling of the field’s energy signature with a different one like when Wanda came out, and it never, like, powered down for a complete systems reboot like _Jurassic Park_.”

“Hayward didn’t build a man-shaped armed drone and sneak it in while we were all asleep, by any chance?” Jimmy checks, looking to Monica.

“And get it past Darcy? No chance of that,” she states with finality. She raises a palm and Darcy gleefully goes in for the high five. Suddenly somber, Monica adds, “Not that I trust him not to try something like that since the concealed missile he had me pilot into the Hex.”

Encouraged by the high five, Darcy figures they’re good enough friends now for the quick pat she gives Monica’s knee. Usually, how she’d cheer up a friend who was the victim of a betrayal would be homemade cupcakes and nostalgic rom-coms, but that’s just the routine for asshole ex-boyfriends. She doesn’t have a procedure in place for asshole S.W.O.R.D. directors.

“For now, I think we assume that Pietro was created inside the Hex,” Darcy proposes, “and that he’s therefore just a facsimile of Pietro, not the real guy. Fabricating a sentient, autonomous replacement-brother—on what was, as far as we know, her first try—is one hell of an arts and crafts flex, but I vote for figuring out the how later.”

“Yes, I would love to stick to facts,” Jimmy says. “The fact is, Fake Pietro is in there now and he’s a new element. We don’t know what his effect will be, on Wanda or the storyline.”

“If there were to be a brotherly bonding moment between Pietro and Vision while they flip burgers or something, that would be adorable.”

“I’ll put that down as our best-case scenario,” Monica comments dryly.

“It would be adorable,” Jimmy mouths to Darcy, who grins.

“Ok, everybody,” she says, “do what you gotta do to get ready for... we have no idea what.”

She’s staring after Jimmy, a little daydreamy, when Monica stands, posture strong and straight.

“The rallying cry could use some work,” she jokes, “but luckily, this is not the first assignment where I’ve had to be ready for anything.”

“God, you are so awesome,” Darcy breathes as she’s left alone at her desk.

* * *

Darcy types and squints, types and squints, and two hours go by. Her hat’s around here someplace, her hair disheveled where she keeps pushing it out of her face. She needs a snack break that she hasn’t let herself pause for. Her neck hurts. She’s really glad to see Jimmy.

“What are you working on?” he asks, returning and raiding her M&M’s stash. “If it’s super technical, I can either ask a lot of questions that’ll probably seem really dumb to you or just keep my mouth shut and nod along while you explain. Your call. I also learn well through metaphors, if that helps.”

“I’m… drafting emails.”

“Oh. So not astrophysics stuff that’s way over my head then.”

She studies him.

“Was that a pun?”

“If you’re impressed, then yes. If not, of course it wasn’t. I’m a very serious federal agent.”

Darcy laughs and holds out her hand for him to share the M&M’s.

“I was thinking…” she starts, chewing an orange one, “that our best shot at getting through to Wanda really isn’t going through Wanda.”

“She’s definitely not a S.W.O.R.D. fan,” Jimmy agrees quietly as he scans the surrounding workspace with his eyes.

“After that last episode of _WandaVision_ , she and Vision are clearly having some troubles, but he’s the only person either willing or able to keep pushing her to acknowledge the truth.”

“Ok, yes,” he picks up, “I see where you’re going. If Vision’s company intercepted one of your emails by accident, then why not try to send one on purpose?”

“ _Exactly_!”

“So, what’ve you got so far?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure whether it’d freak Vision out if I addressed him directly, so I have one set of drafts that does and one set that’s generic.”

“‘Dear Sir or Madam,’” he reads, “‘I hope this email finds you well.’”

Immediately, Jimmy laughs and Darcy gives his arm a light shove.

“Stop, it’s not supposed to be funny.”

“You’re right. I’m sure he’s doing great. I’m sure the morale at his office is off the charts.”

“Shut up.”

Smiling, Jimmy wheels in close and rests his elbow on the desk as he stares at her screen. Despite their bare-essentials living conditions, his shirt is ironed, his hair is combed. Darcy tips her head subtly to the side to bring her face closer to him. He smells like he showered this morning.

“The problem is that I’m not sure how much to tell him. In the episode, he asks Wanda what the ‘Maximoff Anomaly’ is, which is fair because that’s just what we called it out here. But, he’s still Vision, meaning his brain is a crazy-advanced computer and I shouldn’t dumb anything down for him. _But_ …” Darcy says again.

“Double ‘but,’ gotcha.”

“…he’s missing memories of his life before Westview and the context that goes along with those memories. Ugh!” She groans and shuts her laptop, then pulls her glasses off, setting them aside. Folding her arms on the desk, Darcy drops her head onto them. “I have a feeling that we’re not gonna get a whole bunch of chances at this, so I really need to nail the email to get Vision onside. It seems to be the one option we have for communicating with him that Wanda doesn’t control.”

“Sounds like you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself.”

“I don’t wanna tell any of the S.W.O.R.D. people my email idea because they’ll either try to stop me or say it was _their_ idea. The only person who’s given me any credit for my work since I got here is you.”

“That’s easy because you’re about the only person who bothers to tell me what they’re doing.”

“My motivation is completely selfish,” Darcy jokingly confesses, turning her head until her forearm is under her cheek so she can look at him. “It’s easier to rope you into helping me when I keep you informed.”

“Oh, is _that_ what’s been happening?”

She nods, head horizontal, and her hair flops across her face. She blows at it comically. Before she can (find the will to) unpin her arms to fix her hair properly, Jimmy’s hand is there, sweeping it off her cheek. There’s kind of a gooey look in his eyes until they meet hers and the both of them quickly glance away.

Darcy hastily straightens up—bizarrely, _blushing_.

“I got it,” she says, taking over to tuck the strand behind her ear. Without glasses on, there’s so much more space for it to rest, but she reaches for her glasses and jams them back into place, probably fucking up the adjustment. God, her optician’s going to hate her, always coming in with her glasses colossally out of whack. “I was just being lazy.”

“Sorry, I didn’t—”

“No, no, that’s—”

“If you don’t want me to—”

“I want you to,” she says. She laughs self-consciously. “I just look like a slob and you look like a cardboard cut-out from the FBI’s lobby.”

“You’re saying I look stiff?”

Wow, Darcy does not trust herself to reply to that right away. She’s in enough of a flap without bungling an attempt at hitting on him. She takes a breath.

“No, you look perfect. Like they’d take a picture of you and make a life-sized cardboard Agent Woo to show everybody what a model employee looks like. And there’d be, like, a table of snacks and stuff next to it,” she fumbles to finish.

He smiles without laughing at her.

“Is the FBI lobby hosting a parent-teacher night?”

“Maybe?” Darcy says desperately. “Or I’m just adding details because I’m nervous.”

“Nervous because I look perfect,” Jimmy confirms. “That’s sil—”

Her hand flies up as she levels a warning finger at him.

“Don’t call me ‘silly.’ I’m a grown woman with a PhD.”

“You’re right,” he says. “You’re not silly. I just want to assure you that you don’t need to be nervous. _I’m_ nervous.”

“You are?” She lowers her finger and twists her chair until her knees align with his.

Jimmy nods. Slowly, he reaches out and untucks her hair again so it hangs loose, running his fingers down to the ends.

“Dr. Lewis, sometimes I forget what I’m doing because I’m thinking about how you have the most beautiful blue eyes.”

Weak and still clutching a handful of M&M’s (with candy coating that’s probably melting a rainbow into her sweaty palm), Darcy scoots forward in her chair until their knees bump. Her devil and angel may be on opposite shoulders, but those ladies seem to have formed a temporary alliance as they both scream at her to kiss Agent Woo. She leans in…

…Right as Hayward marches up and asks Jimmy if they’ve matched Fake Pietro to any of Westview’s original residents. It’s another avenue they thought to explore; though unlikely, Darcy, Jimmy, and Monica are trying to systematically rule out the simplest answers to Pietro’s apparent revival.

“Not so far, sir, but Captain Rambeau wanted to check again.”

Jimmy smiles sheepishly when they’re alone. Darcy gets it—the moment’s passed and it really wasn’t the best moment to begin with, with Director Dickhead and any one of a dozen nearby S.W.O.R.D. agents able to walk up whenever they feel like it. She plucks an M&M from her hand and crunches it between her teeth.

“Hey, if I murder that guy, will you be my alibi?”

“You really have to ask?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A meme to celebrate 500 kudos on this fic, and also just because I am Like This™:  
> 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I updated yesterday! If you missed it, I do recommend starting with chapter six, just to enjoy some nice Darcy/Jimmy content before we get into the fallout of what _WandaVision_ canon gave us this week.

Darcy misses the simple pleasure of _WandaVision_ as entertainment. Could it have lasted if they hadn’t found this place? If Jimmy hadn’t raised a red flag, if Monica hadn’t been pulled into the Hex, if Darcy hadn’t teased out the broadcast signal from the frequencies the energy field emits? If, most of all, Hayward hadn’t swung in on a Miley Cyrus-calibre wrecking ball instead of trying for a little of the finesse the name of his agency implies that he should possess?

The turmoil she feels partially responsible for is reflected in the title sequence of today’s episode. Words jump out to sting her: “chaos,” “confusion,” “distorted,” “no way of knowing.” Where past _WandaVision_ theme songs have reminded Darcy of some of her favourite retro shows to watch on lazy Sunday mornings in her PJs, this one is too much. It’s almost dizzying. She’s filled with a sickening dread and wonders if her expression looks anything like those on the people on Willy Wonka’s boat when he pilots them through that fucking nightmare tunnel.

Another change is that the twins are speaking to her. Not like two little telepathic horror children, harassing Darcy from within the prison of her own mind. No, no. Tommy and Billy seem to have wrested control of the narrative from their mom like a couple of kids borrowing the family camcorder. The fourth wall break is big and she isn’t yet sure what to make of it—are they really aware of their outside audience?—or Pietro Maximoff’s involvement. Sometimes, she thinks he’s conscious of the incongruity, but then he’s back to acting like the exact thing he’s ostensibly arrived there to be: the fun uncle with the questionable influence.

She’s really curious to see how Wanda reacts to her little documentarians and whether the filming style of the show will revert back when the lead actress appears, but Wanda’s barely made her entrance (in an outfit Darcy is instantly obsessed with—colour-blocking red and pink? Gorgeous) when Monica’s gripping Darcy’s shoulder and spinning her chair around.

“Go time, huh?” she asks as she stands, looking from Monica to Jimmy.

“Looks like Hayward’s finished, uh…” Jimmy trails off.

“Crapping himself over the probable consequences of his acts of aggression,” Darcy supplies.

“Yeah. He’s making an appearance.”

“He’s been holed up long enough,” Monica says, walking ahead of them with purpose. “Only showing himself to keep tabs on us and interfere.”

“Was he like this at S.W.O.R.D.?” Darcy asks. “Before the dictatorship—ahem, sorry, the _directorship_ —I mean.”

“I never had a problem with him. My mom would’ve had him outta there in a second if he’d tried to authorize something like this while she was in charge.”

The fact that they’re finally ganging up on Hayward feels more than fair to Darcy, since the rest of the people on this base still seem to be on his side, or willing to follow his orders, anyway. She gets that’s how this operation works, but she can’t help judging those who don’t think for themselves when the offensive they’re part of takes the show of force too far.

Briefly, Jimmy’s fingers tangle with hers. They separate before the three of them face off against Hayward, though Darcy half-wishes they were still holding hands so he could stop her from charging down there and kneeing the director hard in the nuts. As it is, she has to stop _herself_ from doing that, which is especially challenging when that sonofabitch calls her and Monica “sassy.” Racist, misogynistic prick. Oh, how Darcy regrets not assaulting this man with her now-defunct ’50s television set when he barged in on her and Jimmy. Tricking Hayward into bending down so she could drop it on his head? Winding the chunky cord around his neck? She pictures all the elusive possibilities while she glares at him.

He’s up on his high horse with his own sizable ego shoved up his ass, mansplaining to Monica about how she doesn’t know what it was _like_. How she doesn’t understand loss and hopelessness and the feeling of being betrayed and abandoned by the Avengers because she was Snapped out of existence for those five years. Bullshit. Darcy was here, Darcy survived, and Darcy would _never_ weigh her experience against ceasing to be and rematerializing to find out her mother was long dead. And she would never use those bleak years to justify murdering Wanda Maximoff, who lost as much as any of them, more than many. A woman in pain.

In Darcy’s eyes, Hayward is the smallest man in the world for being so afraid of one young woman trying like hell to hold her life together that his only answer is a death sentence. Did he ever want to save Wanda? Was this ever about anything besides execution and vigilantism, closing in on the one hero to stagger, grief-stricken, away from the pack?

Screw it, Darcy’s going down there to find the nearest sharp object and tear Hayward a new asshole. Except a heavy hand lands on her shoulder and the three of them—her, Monica, and Jimmy—are banished and/or fired. At first, she’s too preoccupied with attempting to struggle out from under the grasp of the S.W.O.R.D. agent, but when it doesn’t slacken, Darcy’s annoyed that she missed her opportunity to skewer Hayward with some really brilliant parting shot (that she would obviously have thought of in the moment).

“Hey,” she says, addressing Hayward’s strongman thugs instead, “you don’t wanna get rid of me. Your director needs me.”

She can’t squirm away enough to catch Monica or Jimmy’s eye, so she’s hoping that they understand that bargaining for her own place is just her opening move. Once she’s convinced these agents-turned-bouncers that she’s indispensable, she’ll start on her case for the other two. She’s banking on that thing where one woman alone seems distinctly nonthreatening to a bunch of guys with guns. Unless the woman is Wanda Maximoff.

No response, so Darcy pipes up again.

“I’m an important part of this whole operation,” she declares. “My work is invaluable.”

“Oh yeah,” says the guy manhandling her along. “You figured out the broadcast, right?”

“ _Yes_!”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got TVs for that now. Consider yourself replaced.”

“Don’t sound so smug,” she snaps. “What is it _you_ do? March around and aim your weapon at innocent people? Technology’s been able to do _your_ job for years.”

“Darcy,” Monica says sharply from somewhere behind her.

In front of these assholes, it probably sounds like a rebuke, but Darcy heeds it, cutting off her scathing assessment of S.W.O.R.D.’s hit squad division. If Monica wants her to play nice after all that shit Hayward said about her and her mom, then she must have a plan.

Silent now, Darcy quits trying to break free and walks along at a normal pace. She glances side-to-side, peering around corners and into rooms, all the places she’s about to lose access to. The meat-handed S.W.O.R.D. guy is right—they do have a lot of TVs now. As the sitcom style replicates shows from closer and closer to the 21st century, their equipment for accessing the broadcast becomes more sophisticated, and newer TVs are easier to find. Everywhere she looks, the sets are tuned to _WandaVision_. A television in every room; the follow-up American dream to Hoover’s chicken in every pot.

Darcy tries desperately to piece together what’s happening in the episode with each stolen glimpse. Vision’s easy to identify, with his bright-red face, but the yellow-and-green getup is new. Must be his Halloween costume. But he seems to be leaving without the rest of the family. Why would he do that? Darcy strains to look, but the last TV screen is slipping out of sight and, abruptly, she and her unofficial teammates are tossed from the building, the door closed in their faces.


	9. Chapter 9

“I wanted to pack my taser when they brought me out here, but the S.W.O.R.D. guys who picked me up said no weapons,” Darcy says helplessly as the three of them drag the unconscious agents Jimmy and Monica just dropped over to the shipping container.

“I knew I should’ve tried harder to smuggle it in,” she rambles on, lifting a pair of legs as Monica hauls the guy inside. “That’s on me.”

She tried to be the brain while they were being the brawn, but her thoughts kept circling back to, _I left my snacks. All my snacks are in that building. They aren’t even great snacks, but… oh no! My coffee machine!_ Then, Darcy reprioritized by fixating on how well Jimmy can throw a punch. The way he used the element of surprise to his advantage… the speed of his arm as he decked the first guy… the fact that a single hit laid the S.W.O.R.D. agent out _flat_. Pretty sexy. She’s absolutely not in favour of violence for violence’s sake, but James E. Woo makes it look damn good.

Still, Darcy wishes she could’ve assisted a little more actively than just standing there, startled and berating them for leaving her out of the plan. There must’ve been some meaningful signal delivered via eye contact that she missed while focusing on catching seconds of _WandaVision_ as they were escorted from the building.

“We had it covered,” Jimmy reassures her as they step back to let Monica close up the container. “No reason for you to put yourself in harm’s way.”

“I’m fine with being in harm’s way, as long as I get a little heads-up first.”

All three of them are in matching tacky S.W.O.R.D. ponchos and Jimmy smiles, tugging the hood of Darcy’s up. He smooths the hair back from her face.

“I don’t doubt that you can handle yourself when you’re prepared,” he says. “I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t mind being the guy between you and them when you’re not.”

She puts her hand over the back of his, where it’s lingering on her cheek.

“It was kinda nice, not getting punched or shot or anything,” she tells him.

“That’s a service I’m happy to provide.”

“And it wasn’t a bad view.”

“Oh?” He lifts his eyebrows, his expression playful.

“Come on,” she insists, “you looked hot taking those guys down and you know it.”

“Every hour of fitness training suddenly feels worth it.”

Darcy’s just pushing up on her toes, feeling Jimmy shuffle in closer, his hand skimming down the side of her neck inside the hood, when she spots Monica in the corner of her vision. She steps back and clears her throat.

“Something going on here?” Monica asks them.

“Just, uh, adjusting Dr. Lewis’s poncho,” Jimmy says.

“Yeah, for stealth reasons,” Darcy adds.

Monica grins at them knowingly.

“Uh huh. You guys are cute, but we need to move.”

The hideous poncho becomes Darcy’s most treasured article of clothing (until the time comes to shed it and/or misplace it and/or intentionally set it on fire) when Jimmy presses his palm to her back, urging her into a run as they follow Monica’s determined lead. She wants to grab his hand, but two S.W.O.R.D. agents running around the base holding hands would probably attract more attention than if they just run in a line.

The three of them dash down a row of quiet tents, then cut across to an identical row. She’s fairly isolated at her little desk, but she’s newly appreciating how many people there are on this operation, enough to assemble a force to (foolishly) confront Wanda Maximoff during any given shift while the rest are still catching their Z’s. Moving between the barracks is eerie. It’s starting to freak Darcy out like a fun-fair haunted house; she knows the danger is all around her and she’s trying not to alert it to her presence.

Ahead of them, Monica slows down, then glances swiftly around before motioning them towards a small building, essentially a cramped communications outpost.

“Here,” she hisses, hurrying Darcy and Jimmy inside.

Darcy didn’t know what to expect with this job, she’s sure no one did, but her job on a hell of a lot of the days since she arrived here has been to unravel someone or other’s devious plan. Most of those plans still aren’t unravelled—at best, she’s worked the end of the string loose and maybe tugged it, feeling it tense into a new knot. Now, she’s facing the most devious asshole of them all (and, actually, the only person confirmed to be both devious and an asshole) and Hayward’s security protocols are child’s play. He might as well have made all his passwords _1234_ or the name of his favourite movie, which is probably something like _Liar Liar_ or _The Social Network_. Somebody using their access to technology to be a real dick, quickly escalating to pure evil? Sounds about right to her.

As she probes deeper, Jimmy and Monica speculate on exactly how much Hayward knows about what’s happening inside the Hex. What Darcy can tell for 100% certain is that it’s so much more than he’s let on. Weasel.

Her annoyance chills and congeals into an icy jam of uncanniness as she glances at the TV in here (they’re _everywhere_ , even inside this computer-filled nerd haven). Vision’s wandering on the outskirts of Westview, unwittingly acting as their man on the ground as he attempts to engage multiple immobile citizens. This is horrible. Darcy wishes Wanda would cut back to that suspicious fake brother of hers because their frozen faces are too much, too real after the silliness of the twins hunting down the biggest chocolate bars. Those people need help. She wants to help them, so she can’t imagine how Vision must feel. No memory of being an Avenger and yet the drive to protect people can’t have been forgotten. What does he have left to sacrifice? What would Westview even allow him to give?

Monica takes a call and the ring pulls Darcy most of the way out of her thoughts. What brings her all the way into the present is her and Jimmy discussing re-entering the Hex. It’s a bizarre turn-on to hear that Jimmy has the skills to hot-wire a car, but she can’t let that distract her now.

Even with her proof, her science, there on the screen as she displays Monica’s test results (and curses ever assuring Jimmy that Monica was ‘probably fine’ after her trip into and out of the Hex), they aren’t listening to her. Darcy’s panic is more immediate now than it was watching the people trapped in Westview. She knows it’s not just a show, that they’re real, but Jimmy and Monica are _real_ real, here in front of her. And the lab results are real. Dammit, this is why Darcy went back to school and got into science! This kind of data is supposed to mean something! It’s supposed to make people choose _better_.

She just doesn’t know what to do when Monica pits her experience of watching her mother suffer and decline up against these lines and numbers. Monica’s made the argument more personal than blood and reminded Darcy that she can know her cells without understanding her heart. Darcy looks from Monica to Jimmy. Yeah, it might be time to consider her own heart because, just like Monica knows she has to go, Darcy knows she can’t.

In another building, at another desk, she sat and stared at a screen, watching a decade pass in a day. There was always some humour in it—new slang, new costumes to catch the eye. It’s a tragedy though, Darcy decides now, running out of time that fast.

She’s shaky, getting to her feet to tell them the plan that diverges from theirs.

Monica accepts the news pragmatically. As they shake hands, Darcy stutters out a confession: that she was really proud when Monica told Hayward that she was working with her. _With_ her, not _for_ him. It’s possible that this moment is incredibly embarrassing and fangirl-y, but who cares? Darcy admires this impressive woman and a slightly dramatic parting feels right to her.

Captain Rambeau tactfully slips out to scout out a getaway vehicle, giving Darcy a minute alone with Jimmy. He has his hands on his hips, looking at the floor.

“What would they say in a sitcom right now?” she asks, twisting her hands while her heart thumps hard. “It’s not you, it’s—”

He cuts her off in the best, most surprising way, hand in her hair, planting a somewhat terrifying disaster-movie kiss on her. Darcy’s hands fly up to Jimmy’s shoulders as he propels her back into a wall of electronics. It’s like Jenga meets RadioShack in here, she swears, shit blinking next to her head and switches prodding her through the poncho. There’s a resonant _whoomp_ noise, like something she bumped just blacked out the whole base. How many S.W.O.R.D. agents does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Darcy doesn’t care.

Getting past the shock, she presses back into him, mouth warm and quick on his. He lets her steer him backwards until he collides with the desk, the open laptop just behind him. As she gets two clumps of government poncho in her fists, holding Jimmy against her, Lonestar’s “Amazed” erupts from the laptop’s speakers.

Jimmy jumps and breaks away from the kiss.

“Dang it, did I hit the laptop? Is it broken? Will you be able to—”

Still gripping his poncho, she tilts her head back and laughs.

“My bad. That was supposed to be romantic, not panic-inducing.” She smiles at him, a touch guiltily. “When I hacked into Hawyward’s shit, I also synced my playlist.”

“Can you show me how you… Another time,” Jimmy decides, expression changing from curious to hazy and lovestruck.

“Another time,” Darcy agrees.

He inclines his face towards her, slowly now, as if they have time. Her eyes flicker closed and open and closed again, staying shut as his lips pass lightly across hers. Darcy clasps the back of his neck and seals her mouth to Jimmy’s. Maybe the song’s kinda cheesy, but Lonestar’s right, _it just keeps getting better_.

And when it starts to taste a little bittersweet, when they have to stop, when he has to go, when it’s time to save the world—or just a corner of New Jersey—she tells herself they’ll see each other soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday, valentines.


	10. Chapter 10

She calls Hayward a bastard out loud because just thinking it isn’t satisfying enough.

CLASSIFIED WEAPONS INTEL, Darcy reads again. It’s secrets upon secrets with this—again—bastard. Of _course_ the center of Hayward’s rancid turducken of a filing system is more weapons. She would really like to know if there are any unclassified weapons at this point. Like, the armed drone must’ve been classified too, right? Except to the S.W.O.R.D. agent Hayward tasked with firing the missile (dude had one job, but Darcy’s damn glad he failed). That guy can only have been in the loop so that the Director didn’t personally have to get his hands dirty if the launch successfully murdered Wanda Maximoff in front of her children. Real noble.

Maybe Darcy’s not such a genius at bureaucracy; although she’s happy to be counted as _with Captain Monica Rambeau_ , she is absolutely still unclear on who she was hired to report to. But S.W.O.R.D. isn’t so incredible at maintaining a clear hierarchy either. Director Hayward is at the top and gets to know all the devious plans. He’s the Brain to a whole slew of Pinkys. _Capiche_. Darcy follows that far. Her confusion is below that, because it seems to her that Monica should be a hell of a lot more in the know than the glorified gamer/dickhead who got to fly the drone and pull the trigger, or whatever. Why would Monica not be consulted? S.W.O.R.D. was her mom’s thing, right?

On the surface, the answer is obvious: Captain Rambeau is full of curiosity and compassion and Director Hayward is full of conceit and those cans that fake snakes spring out of. There’s a difference though, Darcy knows, between disparate leadership styles and hijacking a division with the influence and resources of S.W.O.R.D., then bastardizing its virtuous original intentions. Monica was only let in on this operation because Hayward couldn’t keep her out. Or because he underestimated his ability to control her. There was no respect for her position, her experience, or the Rambeau legacy. Maybe that asshole thought he was being plenty generous to welcome her back after the Snap in the first place.

Darcy’s good and mad over her theory that Hayward’s accomplished a very subtle hostile takeover of S.W.O.R.D.—so subtle that he made sure to get himself legitimately appointed as Director. She opens this CLASSIFIED WEAPONS INTEL with a forceful double-click. What it feels like is jumping into Hayward’s dumpster of dirty government secrets with both feet. She can almost hear the scurry of rats fleeing the scene.

CATARACT, the file claims, is for Hayward, T.’s eyes only. Darcy rolls her own at the sickening poetic justice of a cataract being meant for the guy determined to be blind to the truth of every situation, always seeing reality the way he wants to see it. Jeeze, if this bastard spent, like, _five seconds_ on introspection, he might recognize that he and Wanda have kind of the same issue. Only the solution for Wanda is probably a world-class grief counsellor and the solution for Hayward is a smack in the head with a pool noodle. Plus jail time. All the jail time. And then another smack with the pool noodle, to bookend.

Darcy scrutinizes the screen and wonders what kind of commercial Wanda’s subconscious would turn this moment into. A cereal ad could work. FILE-O’s with a prize inside every box! (The prize is always weapons. _Aww, Mom, it’s another weapon_ , the kids will whine, disappointedly pulling the model of the drone pointed at their house from the cereal box.)

She can’t make sense of everything she’s reading, but the gist is bad. Really, she got that much from the file name, whose property is it, and the big ol’ firewall that probably cost a fortune to set up and a few minutes for Dr. Darcy Lewis to tear down. It would’ve been great if Monica and Jimmy had stuck around—for selfish reasons as well as altruistic ones—and could immediately interpret this for her, but email is the next best thing. After a moment of deliberation, she decides Monica’s probably the one driving, so she pulls up Jimmy’s email address.

Absentmindedly rubbing her chin as she selects the files she wants to attach turns into tracing her lips with her fingertip, so aware of how it felt to kiss Jimmy. It’s as if he just pulled back, smiling that tentative smile he gave her, like he honestly had to check that their passionate make-out session was good for her.

“Come back and I’ll show you exactly how I felt about it,” she mutters to the ghost of that moment. “I’ll show you all over this godforsaken janitor’s closet of a comm room.”

Hey, comm room! Darcy has a thought.

Pushing away from the desk, she scans the walls. Buttons, buttons, buttons, lights, dials, lights, buttons, drawer! Bingo! She checks that one, then the next, tugging on every handle until she finds what she’s looking for: a row of walkie-talkies nestled into a charging base. She plucks one out and twists what she hopes is the power knob. A light beside the knob glows green.

“Yes!” she yelps, congratulating herself. “Check you out, _Dr._ Darcy Lewis.”

Shifting her fingers to the other knob, she clicks to the first channel.

“Hello?” Darcy asks into the receiver. Static.

Channel two.

“Hello?”

“No chatter on this line,” a brisk female voice instructs, causing Darcy to jerk her head back. “Who is this? Which unit?”

Making a major uh-oh face, Darcy hastily flips to the third and final possible channel. This time, she’s scared to speak. (Unusual for her.) Of all the people who could hear her, she wants once voice. Jimmy’s. They should’ve discussed this before parting ways, made sure they had a way to stay in contact until they can meet up. Darcy doesn’t have her phone and even if she did, she never got Jimmy’s number. There was no point, they saw each other every day. The farthest they were ever apart was her inside at the monitor and him giving her a thumbs up from the lawn as he attempted to speak to Wanda through the radio. Taking a deep breath, Darcy squeezes the side of the walkie-talkie, depressing the button that will carry her message to an unknown listener.

“Hello?” she tries for the third time. “Hello?”

Nothing immediate, so she sinks back into her seat dejectedly, setting the walkie-talkie on the desk with a clunk. She’s twisting her chair back and forth, the toes of her shoes on the floor just stopping her from flying into an actual spin, when she halts abruptly. Vision’s tracking dot is moving. It meandered earlier, but now it’s definitely headed for the edge of town. Or—Darcy’s mouth drops open—the base?

She stands, sending her chair wheeling backwards. Automatically, she snatches up the walkie-talkie, putting all her chips on channel three.

“Hello? Jimmy? Monica? Something’s going on here. It’s Vision. Please be listening, you guys. He’s headed for the barrier. He has to be, there are no more houses past Ellis Ave. I’m, I’m looking at the map right now. Oh my god,” Darcy rambles, “he’s not slowing down. He’s gonna be here…”

Pulling her jacket aside (the fucking S.W.O.R.D. poncho already discarded on the desk), she clips the walkie-talkie to the waist of her jeans, then shoves the door open to leave her hideout.

It looks like all the base’s personnel are assembling at the edge of the Hex. They must’ve seen Vision’s movements too. If they thought it was Wanda, they wouldn’t be standing so close. Darcy thinks she hears a crackle from the walkie-talkie, but as her hand lands on it, the normally invisible Hex distorts and jitters as the energy field is disturbed. She sees Vision. She sees what he’s trying to do.

Before she knows it, she’s running, screaming at Hayward to help Vision because that bastard director has to be in this crowd, even if she can’t see him right away. She feels the loss of the walkie-talkie’s weight as her motion knocks it free, but she can’t catch it and she can’t go back for it. Vision is in agony, disintegrating in front of all these people who aren’t even _trying_ to help him.

Darcy does. Darcy tries.

What she gets for it is being grabbed by one of Hayward’s devotees, then fucking handcuffed to the grill of the nearest vehicle. It’s a front-row seat to Vision’s suffering and Hayward’s indifference. No, not indifference, because the monster has this stomach-churning inquisitive look on his face, like he’s excited to see what happens. Darcy’s going to cry. Or puke. She pleads for Vision and yanks at the cuff, too tight around her wrist.

The Avenger erodes gold. It’s like the sun sliding back out from behind the moon during an eclipse. What he’s feeling has to be torture, using all his energy to keep from being sucked back through the Hex, and he still speaks for the citizens of Westview, advocating for them until he can’t anymore, slumped on the dark grass. Darcy’s throat is too choked to scream.

She finds her voice when the jerk who cuffed her takes off with the rest of S.W.O.R.D.’s best and brightest, bolting from the abruptly expanding (and abruptly _red_ ) wall of the Hex. This day sucks. Darcy can’t uncuff herself, she can’t run, she can’t do anything useful. The shimmering, sputtering barrier passes over Vision’s prone body and he’s gone from her sight, reabsorbed into _WandaVision_. But that’s not where Darcy belongs. She _can’t_. She blinks against the red light and pictures Monica’s bloodwork. Entering the Hex is what she warned against. She knows the risks and gave those risks a resounding _no thank you_. If she goes in—when, _when_ she goes in—they won’t even know. When they realize, coming after her will be too dangerous. They can’t chance it.

It’s irrational, but Darcy still flinches away from the barrier and shuts her eyes as it prepares to consume her. Though her thoughts of Jimmy are sharp—Jimmy handing her a coffee in the morning, Jimmy pulling a cloth out of the air, Jimmy leaning in to kiss her—the final words she speaks sound glitchy to her ears, layered over the rousing swoop of… carnival music?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dealing with this final chunk of episode 6 wasn't much fun, so here's something to look forward to: I'll be posting the first chapter of a new Darcy/Jimmy fic this Saturday (Feb. 20th). Who's up for an E-rated fake marriage AU?


	11. Chapter 11

Forget reality and illusion—Darcy isn’t even sure she’s conscious.

It’s sort of like that dream she had, with colours and sounds and static. She feels as though she’s in the middle of all that and then, outside it, is the pain. Could she be experiencing every headache she’s ever had at once? She’d believe it, no convincing necessary. That would definitely be sufficient to knock a person out, but she has rarely been in enough pain to have it follow her into her dreams, and as she comes back to whatever self she seems to have left, the pain clicks itself like a pen against the inside of her skull and starts scrawling across her brain, right on the grey lumps and bumps.

_SWORD SWALLOWER_ , it blares, pulsing behind her eyes and in the sensitive molar she’s been avoiding going to the dentist about. _SWORD SWALLOWER SWORD CIRCUS ESCAPE ARTIST NO ESCAPE NO NAME COME TO WESTVIEW STAY IN WESTVIEW HOME: IT’S WHERE YOU MAKE IT NO NOT YOU ME_ , the pain insists.

_ME_

_ME_

_ME_

_I MAKE IT YOU STAY YOU STAY WITH THE CIRCUS ESCAPE ARTIST YOU WON’T TRY TO ESCAPE JUST PUT ON A GOOD SHOW YOU’RE NOT HAPPY BUT YOU’RE HAPPY ENOUGH I’M HAPPY YOU’RE HAPPY ENOUGH THE SHOW MUST GO ON YOU ARE THE ESCAPE ARTIST YOU CAN ESCAPE YOU CAN’T ESCAPE_

And the goddamn circus is the outer layer of the Tootsie Pop. Beyond the static and the pain, the striped tents and the clowns are there in perfect clarity and Darcy isn’t sleeping anymore, if she ever was. She’s mashed down small inside herself and it’s like watching a TV show through a window, if the window were her own eyes and the window was also part of the show and, god, she can’t make sense of this through the commotion spearing through her head.

She seems to be caged inside herself. She’s a kid trying to take her parents’ minivan for a joyride only to find she can’t reach the pedals. Her body rests casually against the front of a car while she screams behind her own impassive face. Is this how everyone around her feels, all the mimes and contortionists and assorted carnival folk wandering across the grass? Why can’t she do that? She’s not gonna beg for a speaking role, but the _WandaVision_ script could at least give the Escape Artist permission to walk around in the background, couldn’t it? Where’s she gonna go? She’ll be good! She’s already trapped inside her head. Was it really necessary to wrap her in chains on top of that? Honestly, the budget for a goofily oversized padlock would’ve been better spent on a less shitty Halloween costume for Pietro Maximoff in the last episode. Wasn’t he supposed to have run out to get that at a store? No one would’ve paid actual money for those jorts, even in the ’90s. As if.

The fact that Darcy can see so much open space is a real slap in the face. Wanda pushed the Hex outside city limits and there’s sky and a lovely lawn of underwatered New Jersey grass as far as the eye can see, if the eye navigates around the food carts and jugglers. If her character—who is also herself—would just walk around a little, a _traipse_ even, maybe she’d be able to spot something inspiring enough to shut off the static, push through the pain, and drive, run, or even _cartwheel_ her way out of this fucking carnival.

Spotting an entire Avenger is too much to hope for, and yet, here’s Vision being led over to her frustratingly disinterested outer self by _that asshole who cuffed her to the car_. Why, she oughta…

But that sonofabitch wanders off and Darcy needs to focus on Vision. She thinks _HELP_ really hard at him—which, hello, how the tables have turned after watching him collapse outside the barrier as the Hex tore him apart—but her dumb-dumb doll self is not cooperating. The Hex is doing its lame Geppetto thing and jerking her around like a puppet, and _this_ puppet is treating Vision like he’s every guy she’s ever had unwantedly hit on her at a bar. God, this is mortifying. And agonizing, super agonizing, because the pressure of the telepathic control intensified the minute she became an active participant in this conversation. It’s working harder to keep her down, shut her up, only let the right words out when it opens and closes her mouth.

Man, she is the mentally-unstable child of Pinocchio and a ventriloquist’s dummy and she would like one emancipation, please, right fucking now.

When her body casually breaks the trick chains that are holding her, Darcy momentarily shifts from anger to jealousy. Where was this bitch when she needed to escape those handcuffs? When this is all over, she’s going to the gym more. Or taking a course on lock-picking.

At last, she can see! She’s walking around! The only problem is that it’s _away_ from Vision, literally the only person in Westview and its magical environs at all interested in helping her. _This is so typical of you_ , she thinks at her outer, headstrong self. _This is just like the time you enrolled in Political Science. You could just stop and think for a minute, but_ no.

There’s a mime pretending to conduct a phone call on a banana, which is absolutely the very last thing she’s able to tolerate, and her feelings align with those projected by her external self for a second: pissed. Only _WandaVision_ -approved Darcy is reaching the end of her rope with Vision’s pestering and is trying to get rid of him by agreeing to a date. Again, mortifying. Holy shit, does this character ever think a lot of herself to be on a show about this man’s blissful home life and assume he’s trying to pick her up.

After Vision’s line about a different mime (they’re pretty thick on the ground here), she follows her cue and turns to watch some jackass struggle under a piece of invisible furniture. If that were Hayward, she would almost maybe feel slightly better, but she hasn’t seen anybody in here yet who looks like him, even squinting past the face paint.

She’s just picturing Hayward’s head disappearing between the closing jaws of a lion in a tragic circus accident when, abruptly, she’s awake. Awake again. It’s like Vision pierces straight through the tiers of her mind—what’s hers and what the Hex made itself Regional Manager of—and it all pops like a soap bubble. Darcy’s left, reeling, but alive. Herself. Should she hug him? No, right?

She babbles her way through introductions. As things turn serious, ol’ Agent Handcuffs shows up again and she is _so_ ready to kick this guy’s ass, Jimmy Woo-style. Luckily (for that wrestling tights-wearing bastard), Vision intercepts him and fields his pushy demands that Darcy head to the big top. She looks from him to a possible getaway car—well, funnel cake truck—ready to tap Vision on the shoulder and book it the hell out of the fairgrounds, but that damn banana-phone mime goes wobbling across her sightline.

Striding towards him, Darcy hears the shuffle of Vision and the S.W.O.R.D. guy following, Vision trying to stay between the two of them.

“I just need one thing,” she announces without turning. When she gets to the mime, she says, “May I?” and yanks the banana from his hand.

He pretends to cry, wringing his fists in front of his eyes.

“Tough,” she tells him. “For all I know, you’re the guy who tried to launch a missile at Wanda.”

“That doesn’t belong to you,” Agent Handcuffs shouts.

Darcy turns to glare at him.

“It belongs to the juggling chimp troop, you know that!” he says. “They go on right after you, Escape Artist!”

“First of all, I have a name, though I’m sure even outside the Hex you didn’t bother to learn it. Second of all…”

With a jerk of her head, she asks Vision to step aside. When he does, she introduces the S.W.O.R.D. agent’s face to her fist.

“I suppose that’s enough of the circus for one day then,” Vision says, lightly tugging her arm as she stands over her fallen foe, beaming victoriously.

They run for the funnel cake truck and once they’re safely inside with the doors locked, Darcy slumps back against the driver’s seat.

“Not to question the judgement of an ally,” Vision begins, “but what exactly was the importance of retrieving the banana?”

“Everything that goes into the Hex gets changed,” she says. Her fingers clench around plastic instead of rubbery banana peel. Somehow, she expected this before ever knowing for sure.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning this isn’t a banana. Or it is and I seriously need to go to a hospital because I swear this thing is talking to me.”

“No,” he says softly, “I hear it too.”

Darcy examines the object, extending an antenna and sliding back a panel to reveal both a microphone and a speaker.

_Darcy? Darcy, do you copy? Darcy?_

It’s much louder now and she grins at Vision. The S.W.O.R.D. agent smacks his hands petulantly against Vision’s window and Darcy raises her middle finger in response, not looking at him. She depresses the button in the side of the plastic banana the Hex transformed her walkie-talkie into.

“Jimmy?” she says. “I’m here. Uh, over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	12. Chapter 12

She wishes she had hold music. Elevator music, waiting music, filler music. If Wanda were airing her and Vision’s escape from the circus (which Darcy’s sure she’s not, because this is pure chaos and the opposite of what her apparent creative vision for the show is), it would probably be accompanied by a rollicking score—dizzy flutes and thumps on a big drum as she wheels away from the tents and towards Westview proper. With music, Jimmy would have something to listen to while she kept him on the line. Without it, she had to do a hasty hi-bye and pass Vision the banana while she put both hands on the wheel.

Darcy takes driving very seriously and follows all the rules. In every friend group she’s been part of since high school, she’s been the friend who drives. And look how it’s coming in handy! If she were worse at this, she could’ve creamed one of those pie-to-the-face clowns on her way out of the fairgrounds. Of course, the stringent rule-following also compels her to perform a full stop at every intersection, marked with a yield sign, stop sign, traffic light, or nothing at all. Choosing between road rules and mind control, it’s no contest which she’d rather obey, so it’s road rules all day while Jimmy waits and Vision talks.

They’re like two old friends with a lot to catch up on—except that they just met, everything she’s catching him up on is stuff he should already know, and he was kinda just born (again), like, a little over a week ago, so not exactly _old_. Still, there’s a definite road trip vibe. Darcy wonders if the scent of funnel cakes wafting from the back of the truck is comforting to a guy who doesn’t eat because, really, he’s taking all of this information in stride. It’s mostly bad. She tells him about how he was murdered (twice) and how Thanos plucking the Mind Stone from his forehead doomed a lot of other people. Like, a _lot_ a lot. Then, they each just quietly speculate on the consequences of all these events for Wanda’s mental health.

Darcy’s _definitely_ had better road trips.

“Right, well, while you process all that, I’m just gonna check in with…” She puts the truck in park and points at the walkie-talkie banana.

“Yes, of course.”

Vision passes it over, then turns away to look out his window, either lost in thought or trying to give her as much privacy as he can with them sitting side-by-side in a truck. She turns towards her own window as she squeezes the side of the banana to talk.

“Jimmy? You still around?”

“ _Darcy!_ ”

“Hey,” she says softly to the crackle of his voice.

What with family and friends who were Snapped rematerializing just weeks ago, it really hasn’t been long since she heard her name spoken with that much relief and enthusiasm, but it’s still special. Because it’s Jimmy. She missed the sound of his voice so bad.

“ _Darcy, what are you wearing?_ ”

“Whoa there, stud,” she says, chuckling, “I’m not alone.”

She shoots a look at Vision, but he really doesn’t seem to be paying her any attention. Yeah, dude’s got a lot on his plate.

“ _The S.W.O.R.D. poncho_ ,” Jimmy reminds her. “ _I don’t want Wanda to misidentify you as a threat_. _You are inside the Hex, aren’t you?_ ”

Darcy smiles because he called it the Hex.

“Yeah, this asshole handcuffed me to a truck so I couldn’t run away, though I don’t think I would’ve gotten very far. And don’t worry about the poncho; I ditched that thing right after you and Monica left. I’m wearing, uh, some sort of circus outfit, but not the super skimpy leotard kind, so I don’t really have any racy fodder for banana-phone sex.”

“ _Banana phone?_ ”

“The object formerly known as the walkie-talkie I swiped from S.W.O.R.D.”

“ _Who handcuffed you? They left you to get pulled into the Hex?_ ”

“Don’t worry about that guy. I took care of him already _._ ” Darcy studies her nails and buffs them on her jacket like punching S.W.O.R.D. agents’ lights out is a regular thing for her.

“ _But how did you? How did you get free? Not from that guy, but from Wanda’s magic. She should be in your head right now._ ”

“Vision found me and he… did something. Woke me up. I’m with him now. Actually,” Darcy realizes, “I better get back to that. Will you be around? Can we talk more?”

“ _That’s all I want. I’ll be here. I’m glad you’re safe. I knew I shouldn’t have left you at the base like that._ ” She can hear the strain of regret in his tone.

“You didn’t leave me,” she insists. “I chose to stay. And it’s a good thing I did because we needed that information from Hayward’s secure files, though maybe we can talk about that when I call you back,” she suggests, eyeing her passenger.

“ _Whatever you want_.”

“Don’t tempt me, babe.” The endearment slips out. “Bye for now.”

Darcy lowers the walkie-talkie and shifts in the driver’s seat, turning to Vision.

“Don’t tell me you’re out of questions already,” she prompts.

He gives her a tired smile and launches into more of them, seeking clarification in every direction, like each piece of information she provides is a round room with a dozen doors opening off of it. Darcy’s both curious and terrified of what it must be like inside Vision’s head. When they stop again (because of a _construction crew_? Really? Ugh) she assesses that what this guy really needs is a hand with what’s inside his heart. She doesn’t care what kind of parts he’s made of, she knows he has a heart because she’s seen it all week. When he tied that apron around his waist to tenderize a steak and when he put on a silly Halloween costume. Most of all, when he rocked his baby son in the ’80s episode and kissed his new bride, still in her wedding dress, in ’50s episode’s title sequence. Everything he does is for Wanda and Darcy’s straight with him, letting him know that those feelings are the one thing he doesn’t need to question.

“You belong together,” she tells him.

“Wanda’s certainly put in the work to make it appear that way, but I can’t help but worry that it’s all a bit contrived,” Vision says with a shallow sigh that skims what’s obviously deep pain and doubt.

“She may have… gone a little overboard, but I swear, it’s all for you. She just wanted to protect what you two have.”

“So then it’s my fault.”

He hangs his head and Darcy feels awful. Not that he’s wrong because, yeah, Wanda did do all of this—mess with all these people’s minds—to create an idealized world for her and Vision to share. She doesn’t for a second think that any of this would exist without him, but she can’t _say_ that.

“Wanda just wanted to show you how much she loves you,” Darcy says, presenting him with the kinder side of the truth.

Vision laughs sadly.

“Flowers might have been simpler. How does your fellow do it? Roses or grand gestures?”

He motions towards the walkie-talkie in her lap.

“Oh,” she says, flustered. “Oh, uh, I’m not really sure we’re official, you know?”

“He sounded concerned for you.”

“No, he is, yeah, Jimmy’s just a nice guy. He’s concerned for _you_ too.”

Vision gives her a knowing smile and, boy, isn’t this turning into a surreal little moment between them.

“Dr. Lewis, how that man feels for you is incredibly clear, even over the poor reception of a phone shaped like a banana.”

“We’ve only known each other a few days…”

“A great deal can happen in a few days,” Vision points out. “Take it from me.”

Darcy frowns thoughtfully.

“We did make out before I ended up in here. That was pretty fantastic.”

“See? Sometimes it’s just there,” he says, standing to an awkward crouch.

“What is?”

“The magic. On that note, I really must get back to Wanda.”

And that bozo phases right through the roof. She watches him out the windshield, flying back to Westview like an oversized homing pigeon. An oversized homing pigeon in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where the action ends for Darcy in episode 7, but this fic ain't canon and our girl's got a banana phone. One more chapter before the next episode of _WandaVision_ , whaddaya say?


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Blacksky, missingcrowdsof1000s, superherosvoidd, agents_cxrter, iarrannme, gomes0419, Linzerj, ohvafltn, frostysunflowers, lonelyWhale52, failuretoland, love_never_dies13, terebi_me, I_should_sleep, Gingerquery, scifiromance, iovewords, and radioactive_storm, for your comments on chapter 12!! The feedback is all so encouraging and I appreciate it very much!

“You guys go to school in some secret bunker under a corn field or something?” Darcy demands. “There aren’t any buildings out here.”

She knows how this looks—bad—to be an adult yelling at children from a food truck that’s really more of a prop, but the line of kids seems unending and she’s bored. It’s nonsensical. They just keep coming, straggling along, holding their blue tethers. The adults watching them won’t engage with her at all, so she’s turned to Wanda’s junior mind-control subjects for entertainment.

“Goin’ to the circus?” she asks, cranking her window down even farther so she can hang her arm out.

Finally, one kid smiles at her, exposing a missing front tooth, and nods enthusiastically.

“Cool, bud! If you see a guy in a blue spandex outfit, stay away from him! He’s kind of a grump!”

She wanted to try Jimmy again the second Vision left her high and dry in the boonies, but just as the Hex put up physical barriers to slow her approach to Westview, it seemed to realize (which makes it sound scarily sentient, but Darcy’ll believe anything since being completely under its control) that it could screw with her in other ways as well. Each time she’s picked up her banana-talkie, the volume outside the truck has surged. First, the construction dudes found her again and started up with a fucking jackhammer—actually _creating_ a pothole, which they then left. Then, there was some crazy booming thunder, so loud that she craned her neck around to see if she could spot Thor landing in one of these fields (nope). Most recently, it was the string of tots getting rowdy. The only method for fighting the way they were shrieking at the top of their lungs was for Darcy to bang her head into the horn and blare sound right back at them.

She’s pretty sure it was the only method.

Fine, it’s the only thing she tried, but no one was around to judge her for being childish towards children and it seemed like a fitting approach. Fight fire with fire, right?

At last, the final, wiggly, little train of schoolkids clears Darcy’s bumper, but she isn’t concerned with driving away any longer. She turns off the engine. Idling is bad for the environment.

“Alone at last,” she sighs, retrieving the walkie-talkie.

Right before she goes to speak into it, she glances up at the rear-view mirror. She checks her lipstick and smooths her hair, makes sure the large ringlets are in order. What a sorry excuse for a date. And yet, she’s really looking forward to talking to Jimmy again. The separation has not been long at all, but the week’s been a whirlwind. With Vision’s validation, Darcy feels more accepting than ever of how quickly she’s fallen for her binge-watching, espresso-chugging, FBI buddy. Like _WandaVision_ , she and Jimmy seem to be on a condensed timeline. They met and immediately started spending most of the hours of each day by each other’s side—sharing meals (chips are potatoes and that’s practically a meal on its own), making each other laugh with little comments, and working more harmoniously than she’s ever worked with anyone. There’s a peace with him that she just settles into, even here, even with all this. It’s been Hallmark movie-fast, but so what? She never sees those characters crying at the end.

She clears her throat and squeezes the banana phone.

“Um, this is Darcy, joining you from Hex 98.3 FM on your drive home. The topic this hour: the Westview Circus lion act—see or skip?”

“ _Darcy_.” Her name is relief and exasperation from his lips and she smiles, twisting her feet happily beneath the pedals.

“Oh, hey, man. Fancy catching you on this frequency.”

“ _Are you safe? Are you still with Vision?_ ”

“Yes to the first, no to the second. Our resident amnesiac Avenger flew the coop. Literally. He flew back home to Wanda, so I’m pretty much just hanging out. Are _you_ ok? Catch me up on what happened with you and Monica.”

“ _I’m fine. I’m at the new base, near the edge of the Hex._ ”

“New base? You guys were able to meet up with Monica’s contact then?”

“ _Did we ever_ ,” Jimmy says emphatically. “ _We— Yes, Major, this is her_.”

Darcy frowns in confusion.

“Did I just get a new nickname or…?”

“ _That was Monica’s contact I was talking to. Major Goodner. I, uh, told her about you. I might’ve been a little anxious before you got in touch._ ”

“Well, put her on if you want. I wouldn’t mind a second-hand account of how you were pining for me.”

“ _Darcy, trust me, I’m emotionally mature enough to tell you myself exactly how much I was pining._ ”

She laughs at his dry, serious delivery. She can tell he isn’t joking; it’s more of an appreciative laugh for who this man is. He’s kind. He’s straightforward. He doesn’t jerk her around. It’s a welcome change from some of the clowns she’s dated. No actual clowns. (On that note, thank _god_ Vision prison-broke her from the carnival before her apparently single-and-ready-to-mingle other self dropped her standards to allow flings with men who carry rubber chickens and wear squeaky noses.)

“ _Major Goodner’s too busy to chat right now anyway. We’re on alert here, waiting to hear from you and Monica_.”

“Monica?” Darcy’s heart drops. “Please tell me she’s somewhere else. Tell me she went farther away from the Hex and not into it.”

“ _I wish I could_.”

“Jimmy, her labs! The mutation of her cells!”

All the images and video of Monica’s test results in Hayward’s files race across her mind’s eye and she cradles her forehead in her free hand, panicked. _No_. Of the three of them, Monica is the last person who should have entered the Hex again. Darcy knows how determined Monica is to save Wanda, but to risk coming back in says she’s just too selfless for her own good. She’s as impressed by her friend as she is scared for her.

“ _I know_ ,” Jimmy’s saying. “ _She tried to do it safely. That was the plan. Major Goodner and her team brought some sort of specialized space vehicle that apparently satisfied the specs Monica worked out when we were back at the S.W.O.R.D. base, but the Hex changed when Wanda expanded it. The vehicle wouldn’t go through_.”

“Is the barrier still all red and shimmery? I can’t see it from the inside.” Darcy still glances back between the seats, but not only does the funnel cake truck have horrendous blind spots, it also doesn’t have a rear window. Basically a hazard on wheels.

“ _Yes. A lot of its properties have changed, probably more than we’re aware of. We could really use you here to study this thing._ ”

“It’s nice to be missed. Tell me what you do know.”

_“The broadcast signal’s gone dead—_ ”

“Well, at least I’m not behind on the episodes.” On the downside, that means socking that guy in the nose wasn’t recorded anywhere for posterity, which sucks. She totally wanted to show Jimmy that footage.

“— _and it doesn’t want visitors_.”

“You said you always got a bad feeling from the barrier though, right?” she checks, recalling one of their first conversations. “Like it didn’t want you to come any closer?”

“ _That’s right, but it accepted Monica easily enough then. This time… it was awful. She had to battle her way through. Assuming she even got through. We don’t have any way to contact her._ ”

“She was probably headed for Wanda, right?” Darcy’s hand is already on the key, ready to twist it in the ignition. “Should I go find her?”

“ _No!_ ” Jimmy’s voice is uncharacteristically abrupt. Harsh even. Afraid. She gives him the space he seems to need, ready when he continues, “ _You said Vision’s on his way to Wanda too, right? I don’t know what kind of mindset she’s in right now, but if she feels backed into a corner, things will get dangerous. You can’t be anywhere near that._ ”

“I wonder if Hayward’s still able to track Vision,” she wonders aloud. “Obviously, the Hex is allowing a radio signal to pass through, but if it’s censoring the _WandaVision_ broadcast, it could be capable of other distortions.”

“ _Like obscuring the signature of decaying Vibranium_ ,” he finishes.

“If Hayward can’t pull off precision with however he was planning to capture Vision, do you think he’ll attack anyway?”

There’s a long pause. She starts to think he might’ve been called away by Major Goodner.

“ _I think the possibility is more than enough reason for you to stay far away from the Vision residence_ ,” Jimmy says very carefully.

“Yeah, but…” Darcy takes her finger off the button for a second so he won’t hear her troubled sigh. When she pushes it again, she wishes it were his hand she’s gripping instead. “If it comes to some kind of fight, I doubt it’ll be contained. My money’s on this whole place going down, the whole enchantment. One big, messy series finale.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *molding the _WandaVision_ finale in my hands like modeling clay* Let's do this.

Darcy’s feeling about as useful as the raw dough sitting in the back of this truck, waiting to be fried and turned into funnel cake. Despite her fears over what the Hex will have done to Monica after her third time passing through it, she almost wishes it had affected her in some more permanent way too, not just granting her a temporary stint with the circus. But even her skills as the Escape Artist weren’t real.

She bounces the banana phone against her knee to the rhythm of the _WandaVision_ theme song—specifically from the ’60s episode. “ _WandaVision_ ,” she says aloud at the appropriate moments, tone phonily bright, until she realizes she’s turning into her own mind-numbing elevator music, like what she wanted earlier while she had Jimmy on hold. She regrets that now, making him wait while she made very little progress navigating these barren rural roads. Keeping him hanging turned out to be pointless. Vision didn’t need her to convey him home because he remembered he could just fly there, Darcy’s reluctant to drive into town anyway after Jimmy’s warning, and… and… She sighs. She should’ve just talked to him.

That’s not an option now.

Jimmy had to end their conversation when “visitors” (his word—as if the benign euphemism would stop her from worrying) rolled up to Major Goodner’s encampment. Before he did the anticlimactic walkie-talkie equivalent of hanging up, Darcy pressed for details. Were these visitors there in force? By road? Air? Whatever their vehicles of choice, were they branded with S.W.O.R.D.’s symbol? Yes, he told her, the vehicles were S.W.O.R.D.’s. And then Jimmy was gone.

The bad news stalled her like she’s stalled this big, dumb food truck every time she’s started it up and then hesitated, not knowing which way to go. The problems are ahead of and behind her now. Somewhere within the town proper, Vision’s confronting Wanda. Outside, Hayward’s underlings almost certainly have Jimmy detained. (Because what else are the people who’ve only made aggressive overtures to anyone non-S.W.O.R.D. going to do? Find him better snacks than they had before and admit that they’ve realized everyone should be working together to solve this thing before it gets any worse?) Darcy’s wary about following Vision into town because, one, her sense of self-preservation is even healthier after being mind-controlled and, two, Jimmy didn’t want her to. Yeah, yeah, she’s Dr. Darcy Lewis and nobody’s the boss of her, but also, he’s Jimmy and he made her promise to _avoid_ the danger. She’d like to go back and pick him up to find out what other instructions she’d totally cave to once he’s in front of her again, but the Hex is a pretty substantial obstacle to the dramatic reunion in her head.

Darcy starts the truck up again, puts it in gear, and drives a whole concession before she can’t resist trying Jimmy on the walkie-talkie. The second she picks it up, she worries about some S.W.O.R.D. asshole being on the other end. Although it would provide a fantastic opportunity for chewing them out, that plan of attack wouldn’t have any other benefit. Maybe they’d be mad at Jimmy for taking one of their walkie-talkies. Maybe they’d train a gun on him.

When the walkie-talkie crackles, she almost drops it. But a voice, Jimmy’s voice, comes quickly after the staticky sound of his breathing.

“ _Darcy, are you alright?_ ”

“Me?” she nearly shrieks. She speaks more softly as her brain catches up to the fact that he was whispering. “The last thing I heard from you was that S.W.O.R.D. showed up. And then nothing! What the hell happened?”

“ _They rounded us up. Everyone from Goodner’s base_.”

“I didn’t realize enough of Hayward’s agents got clear of the Hex expansion. There are so many clowns in here. It’s like the Hex is hosting auditions for _It_.”

“ _Nobody’s caught up to you though, right? You said that one guy didn’t want to let you leave the circus. Even under Wanda’s control, he obviously retained that original impulse to detain you._ ”

“Nah, I haven’t seen anyone,” Darcy confirms, scooting forward in her seat to take in the full scope of her view from the broad windshield. “So, how are you talking to me? I can’t imagine that Hayward’s suddenly playing nice.”

“ _No, you were right about him. He’s a dick. They underestimated me though, which has been helpful. They quit searching me after they relieved me of my gun, so they didn’t find the walkie-talkie_.”

“Did you have it concealed in some kind of secret pocket or something?” she asks with genuine excitement. She’s a fan of his magic tricks.

“ _Any modifications to my FBI-issue jacket would be strictly prohibited. Also, maybe._ ” She can hear the sly grin in his voice and it makes her feel better, really it does, even as her heart squeezes. “ _I managed to steal a phone too. Called up my buddy Cliff at Quantico, so the cavalry is on its way. Unfortunately, I’ll just be biding my time until then._ ”

“You’re not gonna try to take on the dregs of Hayward’s taskforce alone?” Darcy teases. “What happened to the guy who fought his way off the base in the first place?”

Though it’s soft, Jimmy laughs.

“ _That guy had Captain Monica Rambeau kicking ass next to him and a whole lot less people to fight._ ”

“I guess we’re both sitting tight then.”

She isn’t surprised to hear that he plans to not be reckless, but it’s still reassuring to know he isn’t in immediate danger.

“ _Sitting tight on a bunch of hay bales, to be specific. It’s a little itchy, but at least I’m out of the handcuffs._ ”

“You got cuffed too? Twinsies!”

“ _Not the reaction I was expecting_.”

“I can do it again but swap in my rant about the imminent vengeance I’m going to wreak on those bastards for laying a hand on you? If you want.”

“ _That’s ok. It wasn’t really that serious. I got outta them in a jiffy_.”

“Can you teach me that trick too?” Darcy asks, smiling into the banana phone as she pictures the two of them together again, laughing through her continued apprenticeship in close-up magic. The Mickey Mouse to his Sorcerer.

“ _I- Darcy_ ,” Jimmy says, tone changing to something sharp and urgent. “ _You might need to go mobile_.”

“Why? What is it?”

“ _When they brought me to Hayward’s new base, everyone was congratulating each other on a successful launch. I didn’t know what it was, but I got a quick peek at a screen that seemed to be tracking Vision._ ”

“Like the one you, me, and Monica were looking at before we separated?”

“ _Yes, but… there were two dots, close together, almost overlapping_.”

“Vision and Wanda?” she guesses.

“ _I didn’t have a chance to theorize, but now… they’re far away… I can’t quite tell…_ ”

With the banana phone clutched securely in her hand, Darcy heaves the door of the truck open and hops down to the street.

“Where am I looking?” she asks, stepping back from the vehicle and scanning the horizon.

“ _Up_.”

She lifts her gaze and cups a hand above her eyes, blocking out the abruptly glaring sun on a day that’s a meteorologist’s worst nightmare, trapped under magically changeable skies. There is something up there, moving fast. Darcy squints. In the split-second of pause before it streaks off in a different direction, the _it_ becomes _they_ : two figures, dark and blindingly white.

Raising the walkie-talkie, she squeezes the button to speak.

“It’s Vision,” she tells Jimmy. “They both are.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the following readers for their comments on the last chapter: agents_cxrter, superherosvoidd, SpideyFics, alkalinekiwi, Linzerj, iovewords, cluelessrebel1988, Fabulousflutterings, missingcrowdsof1000s, and scifiromance!
> 
> I appreciate your continued enthusiasm for this fic now that _WandaVision_ is finished! We're working towards the ending here as well with just a couple chapters to go and the first significant divergence from the canon finale in this one!

“It’s sorta mesmerizing,” Darcy decides, tracking the swoopy, jerky path of the two Visions.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Jimmy agrees over the walkie-talkie, “ _it’s like… how birds fly during mating season._ ”

“Way to make it incredibly weird, dude.”

“ _Stop it. I enjoy nature documentaries_.”

He can’t see her, but she raises her eyebrows as the figures continue to zip across the sky.

“Nature documentaries and _WandaVision_. You’re really sampling from the full spectrum of what TV has to offer.”

“ _Yeah, well, not most TVs for that second one. I only ever saw_ WandaVision _thanks to you._ ”

“Do you wish you hadn’t?”

The question leaves her mouth, light and free as one of the wispy clouds up above. Of course, it’s really a storm cloud of a question, loaded with the rain of implication though it seems fluffy enough at first glance. For Jimmy to have never seen _WandaVision_ , Darcy would have to never have found the signal, and because she’s simply too good at what she does not to have found the signal, Jimmy’s lack of exposure to the show could only have been guaranteed by one or both of them not showing up to Westview.

Her heartbeat seems to hitch.

Would he trade it? Their couple dozen meaningful conversations and single desperate kiss for the presumably blissful ignorance of never being clued in about any of this? Darcy’s sure Jimmy’s job has stressful moments, but this level of stress has gotta be higher than what he encounters on the average FBI case. Even with the high-tech weaponry and the pulsing, magical glow of the Hex, she feels that their current circumstances have a primal atmosphere, a humming undertone (that’s for sure escalated to an overtone) presaging a fight for nothing more or less than survival. It’s not far off from a nature documentary after all.

“ _If I hadn’t_ ,” he says, “ _I woulda found something else to talk to you about every day_.”

Oh man, she’s making her _aww, Wanda gave birth_ face. But he can’t hear her rogue sniffle because her finger’s off the button of the banana phone. And he can’t spot her stray tear because they aren’t sitting side-by-side at her desk. Wanda wrapped Darcy’s emotions around her magical little finger so fast, but that was easier because it’s TV. She can cry watching a show because the people are just characters and anything too bad or sad will either be fixed by the time it’s over or the second Darcy changes the channel. Jimmy saw her being vulnerable because he’s perceptive. Mostly, she doesn’t feel any more comfortable crying in front of a new acquaintance than she would pulling her shirt up and putting on deodorant in front of them.

He caught her though. He caught her crying that first day and so she’s been scared. What if he didn’t like her like she liked him? What if he didn’t care like she cared? Now he’s saying the beginning of them would’ve happened no matter what because he would’ve made sure of it. In her work, she deals with the complete range of possibility and she wants to believe that them talking anyway isn’t a faint one. But, fuck, she’s scared, and so she says, flippantly, “Please, you know the only way you wouldn’t have seen the show is if we’d never met.”

“ _Then I woulda found_ you _._ ”

“You would not,” Darcy argues, internally blaming the way her eyes are starting to tear on the sun overhead. “I don’t live in the neighbourhood. An astrophysicist and an FBI agent? Where else would our paths have crossed except in a supernatural scenario like this? Even if you _did_ meet me,” she rambles on, “ _briefly_ , what makes you think…?”

She needs to catch her breath and braces her hand against the side of the truck. It’s clean under her palm, though S.W.O.R.D.’s original vehicle probably wasn’t spotless after motoring through the dirt to drive straight at Vision (when he was in pain, because threatening to run over somebody who’s literally falling apart is one of S.W.O.R.D.’s classiest moves).

“ _I’d’ve had a feeling about you_.” She tells herself his voice is only soft because it has to be, because they’re screwed if anyone overhears and realizes he has tools at his disposal. “ _I_ have _a feeling about you._ ”

Darcy kicks her boot idly into the truck’s big tire and asks in a wet tone, “What kinda feeling?”

“ _Darcy_.” Jimmy’s voice is its gentlest yet.

There’s a violent crackle that stands her hair on end and makes her yank the walkie-talkie away from her face. But that isn’t where the sound came from, because it’s still coming, booming and electric. The source is no mystery—the sky is red and glitchy in a way Darcy hasn’t seen since Wanda expanded the Hex. It’s the whole sky, everywhere she turns to look, not just jagged threads of red leading to a single point of rupture.

“Uh…” she says, bringing the speaker back to her mouth. “Are you seeing this?”

“ _I sure am._ ”

Suddenly, fissures appear at the seams of the Hex like the whole thing’s being rent apart.

“Holy shit,” Darcy breathes in the same moment as Jimmy goes, “ _Goodness gracious!_ ”

“Wanda’s opening the barrier! Like, she’s tearing into it like a bag of microwave popcorn!”

She hops back into the funnel cake truck—though she’s not sure how much protection it’ll be if the Hex folds in or rips apart, all that radioactivity and scrambled matter—and slams the door. The banana phone is on her lap as she turns the key in the ignition. There’s a commotion on the other end of the line, people shouting, which Jimmy quickly explains.

“ _Hayward’s mobilizing! He’s going into the Hex!_ ”

“But you’re not, right?” Darcy asks frantically. “You’re waiting for your Quantico bros and sitting tight? Like you said?”

“ _My people have the coordinates for the base, and a hell of a lot of good those are going to do them if they get here and everyone’s in Westview._ ”

Her heart beats hard.

“You’re gonna do a hero thing, aren’t you?”

“ _I don’t know about that, but I am going to do a Jimmy Woo thing._ ”

“If you’re going, I’m going.”

Filled with adrenaline, Darcy wrenches the truck into drive and stomps on the gas. The streets are clear ahead of her. She imagines it’s taking Wanda’s full concentration to fracture the Hex. No energy left over to be cute by blocking the road with construction crews or kindergartners on a field trip. With one hand, Darcy steers, raising the banana phone to her face with the other.

“My boyfriend with his selectively timed bad-assery,” she blurts, paraphrasing ’50s Vision.

Will there be a better moment to make whatever they have between them official? Will they live to see that moment?

“ _My girlfriend with her lead foot_ ,” he paraphrases right back.

“I’ll meet up with you. The downtown didn’t look that big on the map and I’m guessing that’s where Wanda’s located. There’s a sparkly, vertical beam of red light that seems to be coming from there.”

When Jimmy responds, his breathing is rough, as though he’s running.

“ _Shouldn’t be too hard for you to spot S.W.O.R.D.’s fleet. Looks like Hayward’s ordered everybody to—_ ”

There’s a crunch, then a metallic screech. Darcy stares at the banana phone in horror. Forcing her eyes back to the road ahead, she clicks the button in and out with no result, then smacks the device against her leg. Nothing.

“You better be ok,” she mutters, tossing the walkie-talkie aside. It bounces to rest on the passenger seat.

She absolutely can’t imagine Hayward besting Jimmy in a fair fight, but if that asshole saw Jimmy attempting to hitch a ride into the Hex and sicked his agents on him… Darcy squeezes the wide steering wheel with both hands and presses the pedal to the floor. Director Dickhead’s gonna answer to her.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains non-graphic, canon-compliant violence and includes one paragraph of Darcy experiencing symptoms of PTSD. If you prefer not to read that paragraph, read up until "[...]they're _running_ " and skip the following paragraph, then pick up at "When nothing happens [...]"

She’s curious—is this how Wanda sees the world when her eyes start to glow? The sky over Westview is red, even as the ceiling splits. Darcy would say it looked apocalyptic if she hadn’t already lived through the apocalypse. That day, the weather was lovely. Little dusty maybe. (Yes, she still sometimes uses dark humour to cope with the things she witnessed.)

Wanda must be straining like hell to do this. This is the assumption Darcy makes eyeing the ragged edges of the Hex in her rear-view mirror; the thing looks like it doesn’t _want_ to come apart. Of course, a magical installation this colossal might have become such a powerful system that the only way to really end it would be to let it naturally decay—like a star—not try to feed it through Wanda Maximoff, human shredder. Physics, not emotion, should be able to account for the Hex’s properties. And yet the Hex _is_ Wanda. Darcy understands that now. Does that mean any resistance the Hex has to being dismantled is a direct reflection of its creator’s mixed feelings about the deed? She can’t be unequivocally thrilled to undo it all.

Darcy wonders about the sudden change of heart. What’s happened since the Halloween special, when she, Monica, and Jimmy caught snatches of the episode during their mostly-ineffective banishment from S.W.O.R.D.’s original base? One thing she knows is that Wanda and Vision have been on the outs, though Vision didn’t seem to know any more about that than Darcy did when she was trying to give him a lift home and kept encountering roadblocks. At least, he didn’t say. Did Vision reach his wife and initiate a nice chat, during which they came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to take down the Hex? Sure, the guy is a major voice of reason, but Darcy isn’t convinced he’s quite reasonable enough to balance out the chaotic manifestations of Wanda’s impulsiveness. There has to be more at play here.

She hates being out of the loop and this isn’t like missing an episode of a regular TV show, when she can just cover her ears if someone mentions it, then catch up at the first opportunity. Instead, she has to drive right into the center of the sitcom and confront the characters face to face. Or not quite, if Wanda’s preoccupied with demolishing her emotional-support reality. Darcy’s happy to stand at a safe distance.

Further evidence of Wanda’s changing influence slows Darcy down as she navigates the streets at the outskirts of Westview. This is where she saw unmoving dots (representing citizens) when the Halloween episode aired, but the people have clearly had a talk with their acting coaches and rediscovered their characters’ motivations because they’re no longer paralyzed—they’re _running_.

Though Darcy takes her foot off the gas pedal with plans to coast to a standstill, she’s forced to hit the brakes a few seconds later. The Westviewers are just coming too fast. She knows they’re only people, and that’s more obvious than ever from the very un-mind-controlled look in their eyes, but the rush of them scares her. What if they swarm the food truck, begging her to drive them to safety beyond the barrier? What if they climb onto the hood, smash the windshield, and pull her out to commandeer the vehicle for themselves? This was the kind of thing that used to scare her while watching disaster movies. She was always able to tell herself that would never happen to her, that the place she lived and life she led were too privileged to make this particular fear rational. But then she found herself in traffic on the day of the Snap. People running between cars, screaming, being hit when drivers disappeared from existence. Darcy closes her eyes and tucks her head down, waiting for the first bang against her door, the first crack to the driver’s side window.

When nothing happens, she peeks out. People are still running—more across lawns than down the street as they flee directly from their houses—but it’s like they hardly notice her in this massive funnel cake truck. Pity wells in Darcy. They’ve all been held prisoner inside their heads for more than a week. She experienced that lose of control for less than an _hour_ and being awoken by Vision staggered her, so, ok, she gets it if they’re just following their strongest survival instinct and running without stopping for anything or anyone.

Getting a grip on herself and the remnants of her Snap trauma, Darcy decides she needs to help them. She cranks her window down and yells out, “Hey, open the back of the truck! There’s room for a bunch of you!”

She’s waiting for the chance to swing her door open, hop out, and do it herself, since people are still just sprinting past with fearful eyes, when the scene in the rear-view mirror changes again. The Hex is mending. If the violence of its ripping was worrisome, watching the barrier knit back together is downright disturbing. Around her truck, the people of Westview stutter to a stop before turning back, maybe intending to take shelter in their homes. Darcy can’t offer them better than that, so when the road ahead of her is clear, she taps the gas again and continues on.

Whether or not Jimmy made it through in time is the big question. She’s unsure of the location of S.W.O.R.D.’s new base, so she can’t guess at his entry point, doesn’t know where to look, not that she’d see anything at the periphery as she closes in on the core anyway. He told her about Monica’s attempt to enter the Hex with that space-grade vehicle. That thing, ostensibly a miracle of science and ingenuity, couldn’t stand up to the barrier. Hayward’s team doesn’t have anything better and if they were driving at a closing gap in the wall, Indiana Jones-style, well, that’d just be a hell of a lot more dangerous than approaching a more predictable stable wall. Darcy can’t even think about all that energy clamping shut on a truck carrying Jimmy. She steps down harder and the engine revs.

She never thought to memorize Westview’s layout, but she doesn’t need GPS to know where she’s gotta go—that column of light is shrinking, but there’s still a sufficient sparkle in the air for Darcy to make it downtown (traveling at a considerable speed) before the glow disappears entirely. Easing her foot off the gas, she swings her head wildly, attempting to take in everything at once.

There’s a black shape hovering in the sky by the department store and a dozen S.W.O.R.D. agents flanking the vehicles that brought them here. Although their weapons are raised, they don’t turn them on Darcy as she approaches from a side street. Just as she makes out Monica standing with Wanda’s twins between the motionless agents, one of S.W.O.R.D.’s Hummers breaks formation and goes squealing backwards until it’s right in her path. Darcy has time to brake, but when she sees it’s Hayward in the driver’s seat, she accelerates instead. It was on his lousy orders that she was cuffed to the front of a vehicle just like that one and subsequently transformed into a member of a circus troop, so she makes sure to toot her truck’s carnival horn. A little friendly warning before she rams into Hayward, crumpling the Hummer’s door and shattering the funnel cake truck’s windshield.

Darcy feels and hears the crash after it’s over. Her hands are shaking as she pries them from the wheel, even as she lets out a giddy laugh at the sight of the Director caged inside his vehicle.

“Have fun in prison!” she shouts gleefully. “Consider this your temporary cell.”

She doesn’t hear the pounding of Jimmy’s feet as he jogs up to the truck, but she does hear him calling her name.

“Darcy?”

There he is—grinning, alive.

“Oh my god,” she breathes. “You’re ok.”

“Yeah, we made it in before the Hex closed again and—”

In her attempt to dismount, she fails to take into account that her legs are trembling as much as her hands; she nearly goes down, but Jimmy catches her by the elbows and keeps her on her feet.

“Fifties flirting one-oh-one,” Darcy jokes with a smile, recalling Wanda’s dramatic faux-faint during the dinner party scene.

“Well, you certainly got my attention. Tell me, Miss, you come here to attempt vehicular manslaughter often?”

“Unlike Hayward, I’m not itching to commit murder. If I’d killed him, he wouldn’t have heard me mocking him post-impact.”

“I see. Then congratulations on the success of what must have been a carefully considered plan.”

He’s wearing a S.W.O.R.D. hat, which is an even worse attempt at a disguise than when they ran through the base in those ponchos, though obviously it worked if he made it to Westview without detection. Darcy bats the brim of the hat, knocking it from Jimmy’s head. He glances up quickly before smiling at her.

That smile, the relief in his eyes, the way he’s holding her up. Individually, none of these things scream _KISS ME_ , but she considers them all together…

…and she takes them as her cue.


	17. Chapter 17

As much as Darcy wants it to, the embrace can’t last. She doesn’t know exactly what kind of battle zone she’s driven into. Stepping back from Jimmy, she takes a few deep breaths and shakes her arms, trying to rid herself of the aftereffects of the crash. He watches her carefully, then starts catching her up.

“The Visions are inside that building,” he explains, pointing. “It was violent at first, but it’s been quiet for a few minutes now and I haven’t seen either of them leave.”

“Maybe they’re seeing eye to eye,” Darcy jokes. “Get it? Eye to eye? Vision?”

While Jimmy smiles like he’s humouring her, Monica jogs up to them.

“Darcy,” she greets her, “good to see you. And not mind-controlled, I assume, though I wouldn’t be surprised if driving a truck into Hayward was a Wanda-approved action. I watched her throw a car at Agnes a little while ago.”

“What? I thought they were best buds.”

“Not anymore.”

When Monica directs her gaze up to the sky, Darcy follows it with her own eyes to realize they’re looking at that dark, floating shape. Which is a person. A woman. _Agnes_?

“ _Agnes_?” she repeats aloud.

“Yeah, she has her own magical thing going on. Stirring up trouble by kidnapping Wanda’s kids, then severing Wanda’s control over the citizens.”

“That explains the people trying to make a break for it.” When Monica and Jimmy look at her quizzically, Darcy elaborates on what she saw on her drive into town. “But I guess they’re stuck here now that the Hex is closed again,” she concludes.

“Even with their awareness, they won’t all want to leave. Some of them have family members confined inside their homes.”

“I guess that’s where Wanda kept the children until she needed them for the Halloween episode,” Jimmy deduces with a hard look on his face. “We have to get people out of here.”

“Where are they gonna go though?” Darcy asks. “They can’t leave.”

“Not yet they can’t, but if we start getting them organized, they can be ready to go if the Hex opens again.”

“Should we take the twins?” she wonders, glancing over to where Wanda’s kids are positioned inside the semicircle of frozen S.W.O.R.D. agents, looking worried and restless.

“Believe me,” Monica says. “Those two can take care of themselves.”

Just then, there’s the sharp sound of glass shattering and Darcy tilts her head back to see the pale version of Vision go shooting through the roof of the building Jimmy said he and his counterpart were inside. Seconds later, regular-looking Vision exits less dramatically, sailing out the entrance. The twins run to meet him.

“Well, now their dad’s back,” Darcy notes, more comfortable leaving the kids in the company of one of their parents.

“Monica’s right though,” Jimmy tells her as the three of them skirt the S.W.O.R.D. vehicles, heading away from the stores and towards the houses, “the boys can handle themselves. I watched Billy use his powers to stop a bullet. You wanna tell Darcy what happened to the rest of the bullets?” he asks Monica, grinning.

Darcy looks to the Captain.

“I absorbed their energy as they passed through my body, so they just dropped to the ground.”

“As they passed through your _body_?” Darcy shrieks, halting and scanning her eyes over Monica, searching for bloody wounds. There isn’t so much as a hole in her shirt.

“You were right about how thoroughly the Hex was rewriting my cells,” she says. “When I came through this time… it changed me. I felt it.”

“You should probably get new bloodwork done after this. We could go over it together and try to figure out—”

“Great plan, guys,” Jimmy agrees, raising both arms to herd them along again. “Maybe we can have this conversation in a safer location. Something tells me things are about to get hairy.”

Darcy looks around as they hurry away from the town center and spots Wanda doing her magic finger-wiggles next to Agnes, now standing on top of the department store. Seconds later, Wanda tackles Agnes off the roof and the two of them course-correct, shooting up into a sky rapidly filling with stormy crimson clouds. Darcy looks again as they reach the first houses and sees Wanda flinging crackling fistfuls of her power at Agnes. Vision flies up to help his wife, but she obstructs his path with a magical barrier.

“Darcy,” Jimmy’s saying, “you take the first house. Monica, the next. I’m the one after that. We sweep this side of the street until the end of the block, then go back up the other side.”

“Not everybody’s been freed of Wanda’s control,” Monica adds, shouting a little as a wind that has to be part of Wanda’s rogue weather pattern whips up.

“Good to know. In houses where at least one person is… what are we calling it? Awake? If someone’s awake, they can tell you if they have any additional family members inside. If everyone’s still under Wanda’s spell, you’re going to have to search every room. Be as fast and as efficient as you can,” he instructs, squeezing Darcy’s hand though he looks back and forth between her and Monica.

“Gotcha,” Darcy says.

“Tell them to be ready to go once it’s safe. Send the ones who are awake to the homes of their controlled neighbours.”

“We should tell them to call everyone they know and spread the word,” Monica suggests. “We’ll reach more people faster.”

“Yes,” Jimmy says. “Nobody slips through the cracks when we start the evacuation.”

With a nod from him, they disperse, Darcy’s fingers slipping reluctantly from Jimmy’s.

She charges into the first house as Monica and Jimmy take off down the street. The middle-aged woman living there welcomes her with vacant friendliness, but the teenager she lets out of an upstairs bedroom (it must just be the family members Wanda forbid from opening those doors, Darcy figures, because she doesn’t have to break it down to get inside) is ready to take charge, despite her obvious frayed nerves.

On her way out of the house, Darcy looks through the living room window. For a moment, all she can distinguish are the red, roiling storm clouds. Then, a sudden beam of light. A stream of dark, rich red—scarlet, maybe—colours the fiery bridge connecting Agnes and Wanda as they hover over Westview. From what Monica told her of recent events, Agnes has been egging Wanda on, using her children and the revelation of the terrible reality experienced by the civilians living under mind control to provoke a reaction. Looks to Darcy like the goading’s paying off. The harder she stares, walking unconsciously closer to the window, the clearer it becomes that Agnes is siphoning Wanda’s powers from her.

All of that red magic rushes at and into Agnes and when it stops, when Darcy staggers out onto the front step with her ears humming from the sudden quiet, Wanda is hanging limply in the air. She hears nothing but a high, faint scream of “Mom!” that she can feel cover her arms in goosebumps beneath the Escape Artist’s coat until Monica yells, “Hurry, Darcy!” from behind her, making her jolt back into action.

Darcy nods and runs across the lawns. The heavy silence only lasts until she’s giving the emergency evac spiel at the next house (thankfully populated by an un-mind-controlled older couple). Then, she feels the change in the air. She steps into the middle of the road to see better and Monica and Jimmy are by her side within seconds, finished notifying that side of the street. There’s a low boom as giant symbols appear on the walls of the Hex.

“What do they mean?” Jimmy asks her softly.

Darcy shakes her head.

“They aren’t scientific.”

“They look… old,” Monica says.

Before the three of them can speculate further, captivated by the mysterious symbols despite the task they’ve left unfinished, Wanda’s wilting body is haloed by a blazing light. Darcy squints to see her. At the center of her own sun, Wanda no longer appears weak or lifeless. What they’ve always wanted—Darcy and the two people witnessing this with her—is to help Wanda. Looks like Wanda’s just decided to help herself, and the extent to which that self-help is manifesting makes Darcy feel very small and very, vulnerably human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one chapter—complete with fix-it ending—to go!


	18. Chapter 18

Darcy, Jimmy, and Monica have been working their way across Westview in as straight a line as possible, knocking on every door in every cute little cul-de-sac in their path. It was Jimmy who asserted they should never put their backs to a dangerous situation, but Monica who overruled that statement, pointing out that they were more likely to stay focused if they didn’t keep staring at the fight in the sky.

Darcy thinks they were both right. There’s a tingle rippling up and down the back of her neck, like she gets when she’s up in the middle of the night, spooked by shadows her anxious, overtired mind is too eager to turn into monsters, but the heebie-jeebies give her the energy to work quickly. She takes on an entire crescent on her own, readying people for a departure she’s certain they’ve been longing for. As she’s coming out the crescent’s other end, she realizes the Hex is getting brighter; the red storm clouds are being sucked back into themselves to leave a thin daylight.

Standing at the corner, she watches Jimmy and Monica emerge from the street opposite. Darcy jogs over, wincing. Wanda could’ve put orthotics in these Escape Artist boots. They’re blistering her feet.

“This has to be a good sign, right?” she asks, motioning to the calm skies.

“Look,” Monica instructs. She jerks her chin and Darcy and Jimmy follow her line of sight to see Wanda, Vision, and the twins coming up the main road.

Darcy gasps.

Wanda’s gone from bumming-around-the-house sweats to battle-ready chic. With her armour-like bodice, gloves that leave those magic fingers free, and an usually-shaped tiara framing her forehead, she’s both intimidating and otherworldly. But she’s smiling. Darcy would call it a sad smile and it hurts her heart to see it, even though she doesn’t understand.

As Wanda passes them with her hand held fast in Vision’s, she turns her head to nod at Monica. It’s in her eyes too, the same thing that’s in her smile. Something tired but present. Gone are the comedically darting glances of her persona as the bumbling new girl in town and the frazzled energy of a mom trying to corral a couple of superkids. It looks like she’s finally letting go of the illusion/delusion.

“Can we do anything for her?” Jimmy asks as the family continues on down the middle of the street.

“No,” Monica says. “The rest is for Wanda to do on her own.”

“We might as well head back towards the center of town,” Darcy says. “We don’t need to waste time at the edges. They’ll be the first to wake up.”

She points to where the Hex is shimmering on the horizon. The seconds pass and the shimmer looks messier, a weave of overlapping wires fritzing with energy. The edge is coming closer, but unlike when Wanda pushed the boundary farther, closing it around Darcy and her S.W.O.R.D. nemeses, this isn’t menacing. Wanda’s powers are no longer looking to consume more territory, they’re contracting. Faster than the incoming wave of the walls, the Hex goes dark. The red glow is intensely magical in the sudden night.

The three of them fan out, hitting the houses in their new route, and make their way back to the town square. They’ve been telling everyone to remain in their homes until they receive further instructions to evacuate, but Darcy spots a figure on the sidewalk by the department story. It’s Agnes, except… not as they saw her lately. No wild hair or billowing, layered outfit. No levitation. Darcy’s wary in the face of the woman who appears so much like her former self, the one supposedly under Wanda’s control. This Agnes has a damn Peter Pan collar poking out of her sweater! She couldn’t look much less threatening.

“What do you think?” she asks Monica when she joins her.

“I don’t know.” Monica peers across the street at Agnes in the dark and when Agnes notices, she flashes a wide smile.

“Well, maybe we should— Hey, no, wait!”

But the Captain strides across to meet Agnes. Darcy almost follows in her idol’s wake, but she quickly remembers that Monica has powers to protect herself that far exceed the right hook Darcy used to drop Agent Handcuffs. Whatever Agnes’s deal is, Darcy knows she’s an entirely different kind of beast from an asshole S.W.O.R.D. agent.

“What’s going on there?” Jimmy wonders, coming up beside her.

Thanks to the stress of trying to speak to as many citizens as possible in a short amount of time, including looking dozens of people still under mind control in the eye and aching for their lack of agency, the fear of and for Wanda as she witnessed that clash in the sky, and, really, the car crash that’s still pretty recent, Darcy reacts to her boyfriend’s presence by wrapping her arms around him tightly. With his tie pressed to her cheek, she feels him hug her back.

“I don’t know,” she says, carrying on the conversation without pulling away an inch, “but Monica’s finding out.”

“Agnes looks like an average Westviewer again. It’s disconcerting.”

“She must’ve been faking right up until she went head-to-head with Wanda.”

“And now she’s one of them for real.”

“Seems like,” Darcy agrees.

When Monica returns to confirm Agnes’s newly mind-controlled status, Darcy peels herself most of the way away from Jimmy, leaving her arm around his back, beneath his FBI jacket. He rests his arm around her shoulders.

“I don’t know what we do with her,” Monica says, hands on her hips. “We can’t undo what Wanda did, but do we leave Agnes here in Westview, trusting that she isn’t able to hurt anyone? Do we bring her in?”

“If it’s beyond our power to help her, maybe we just leave her here,” Jimmy suggests. “Wanda knows where she is, so we let Agnes stay in a place she can be found when or if Wanda decides to release her.”

“It’s tricky,” Darcy says slowly. “Agnes is capable of doing so much damage, and I’m sure she’s going to get good and angry while Wanda has her trapped inside herself. You and I know how that feels,” she says to Monica. “But _that_ Agnes is secure—as far as we know—inside Sitcom Agnes, like little Agnes nesting dolls. I don’t know if this is the kind of punishment she deserves for pushing Wanda to the brink, but I do know it’s not going to be pretty if that inner Agnes is unleashed with nobody around to mitigate the consequences.”

“Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division,” Monica says softly.

“Hmm?”

“S.W.O.R.D. That’s what we’re supposed to stand for. I think, without Tyler Hayward around, it’s high time S.W.O.R.D. went back to its roots of trying to _understand_ exceptional people, circumstances, and technology instead of just attacking them.”

“Sounds as though you might have a plan, Captain,” Jimmy says. Darcy glances at his face and catches his small, knowing smile.

Monica beams back.

“The _former_ Director may have kicked me off the base, but I’m still S.W.O.R.D. and I still believe in my mother’s original goals for the organization.”

“Hey, it’s your legacy,” Darcy says. “You have my vote for Director.”

“You want to put Agnes under S.W.O.R.D. observation?” Jimmy asks.

“Not just Agnes. Not if Wanda’s willing to listen.”

With the sky rapidly lightening, Monica roughs out a plan that involves a partnership between S.W.O.R.D. and Wanda Maximoff. A partnership because any other dynamic would surely fail. After what they all witnessed today, it’s obvious that someone as powerful as Wanda can’t be held against her will. In exchange for Wanda making reparations to the people and town of Westview (not the least of which will be repairing all physical damage, which Monica knows Wanda’s capable of, since there’s no longer a Monica-sized hole in her living room wall) and an agreement to be held in the custody of S.W.O.R.D., under the leadership of Director Monica Rambeau, Monica thinks she has plenty to offer Wanda.

“You think she’ll do that deal?” Jimmy asks.

“That’s my question too,” Darcy says. “I mean, without the deal, Wanda can go where she pleases, right?”

“But she’ll be alone,” Monica counters. “We know what her loved ones mean to her. That’s what all this has been about—Wanda doing whatever it takes in order to go through life less alone.”

“What can you give her?”

“Vision,” Jimmy says abruptly. “The other one, the one who left. You think he’ll be back.”

“I think he’ll want answers,” Monica agrees. “Whatever Hayward did to him, he did at S.W.O.R.D. and I’m betting that Wanda will see that’s her best chance to reunite with Vision.”

“Vision will come back,” Darcy says, putting it together, “and Wanda will be there waiting.”

“And in the meantime, we use her expertise as we continue our work in a… more transparent vein. Give her access, keep her busy.”

“Keep her _happy_ ,” Jimmy cuts in. Monica nods her acknowledgement.

“Yes. Show her what it’s like to help people again. What better way to remind her there’s more to the world than her artificial paradise than to have her consult on the work we’re doing in space?”

“If you need somebody to sell Wanda on the space angle, I’m your girl,” Darcy volunteers.

“I’ve already had some ideas about that,” Monica promises with a smile.

Her eyes focus beyond Darcy and Jimmy and they turn to see what she’s looking at. Black hood drawn up over her head, Wanda’s walking back into the downtown. Alone. Darcy hopes that the fact that she’s black-hatted doesn’t mean she’s already decided against working to redeem herself to rejoin the good guys.

“You better stay in touch too,” Monica tells Jimmy, shifting as she prepares to intercept Wanda.

“If you reach out to Darcy, I’m sure I won’t be far,” he says. Darcy’s heart performs quick, happy thumps.

With that, Monica walks purposely towards Wanda. Darcy watches her cautious body language and Wanda’s tension in response to being accosted, but there isn’t any visible escalation. When FBI vehicles and the team Darcy assumes belongs to Major Goodner roll up the street, Wanda doesn’t flee. Darcy looks to Jimmy.

“You better go take charge,” she suggests.

He gives her a bashful smile.

“I will in a minute. The evacuation should run like clockwork after all the prep we did. With the Hex removed, everyone’s free.”

“They’re free, I’m free…”

“Are you free Saturday?” The smile’s a little slyer now.

“After all this, I don’t even know what day of the week it is,” Darcy admits, “but yes.”

He laughs.

“What are you thinking?” she asks, twisting to face him as his hand moves from her shoulder to her waist. “Quiet night in watching TV?”

“You know, I think I need a break from TV for a while. How about a movie?”

Darcy grins.

“You buy the tickets, I’ll buy the snacks?”

“Deal,” Jimmy says, and smiles against her mouth when he ducks his head to kiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a wrap on this story! I can hardly believe it! Less than 1k into writing, I realized _Only in a Sitcom_ wasn't a one-shot, but I wasn't expecting to end up with 18 chapters. I've never been in the position of writing the first AO3 fic for a ship before and it's been a really special experience. With each update, I was delighted to hear from readers who were shipping Darcy/Jimmy while watching _WandaVision_ and then finding this story. It's just the best feeling to write something that people are so keen to read, so thank you very much for the kudos and encouraging comments along the way!


End file.
